THE    SACRED    WOOD 


"  INTRAVIT  pinacothecam  senex  canus,  exercitati  vultus  et 
qui  videretur  nescio  quid  magnum  promittere,  sed  cultu  non 
proinde  speciosus,  et  facile  appareret  eum  ex  hac  nota  lit- 
teratum  esse,  quos  odisse  divites  solent  .  .  .  '  ego '  inquit 
*  poeta  sum  et  ut  spero,  non  humillimi  spiritus,  si  modo 
coronis  aliquid  -credendum  est,  quas  etiam  ad  immeritos 
deferre  gratia  solet.'" — PETRONIUS. 

"  I  also  like  to  dine  on  becaficas." 


THE  SACRED  WOOD 


ESSAYS    ON    POETRY    AND    CRITICISM 


BY 

T.    S.    ELIOT 


NEW   YORK 

ALFRED    A.    KNOPF 

1921 


FOR 

H.   W.    E. 
"TACUIT  ET  FECIT" 


CERTAIN  of  these  essays  appeared,  in  the 
same  or  a  more  primitive  form,  in  The 
Times  Literary  Supplement,  The  Athenaum, 
Art  and ,  Letters^  and  The  Egoist.  The 
author  desires  to  express  his  obligation  to 
the  editors  of  these  periodicals. 


vii 


INTRODUCTION 

TO  anyone  who  is  at  all  capable  of  experiencing 
the  pleasures  of  justice,  it  is  gratifying  to  be 
able  to  make  amends  to  a  writer  whom  one  has 
vaguely  depreciated  for  some  years.  The  faults  and 
foibles  of  Matthew  Arnold  are  no  less  evident  to  me 
now  than  twelve  years  ago,  after  my  first  admiration 
for  him ;  but  I  hope  that  now,  on  re-reading  some  of 
his  prose  with  more  care,  I  can  better  appreciate  his 
position.  And  what  makes  Arnold  seem  all  the  more 
remarkable  is,  that  if  he  were  our  exact  contemporary, 
he  would  find  all  his  labour  to  perform  again.  A 
moderate  number  of  persons  have  engaged  in  what  is 
called  "critical"  writing,  but  no  conclusion  is  any 
more  solidly  established  than  it  was  in  1865.  In  the 
first  essay  in  the  first  Essays  in  Criticism  we  read 
that 

it  has  long  seemed  to  me  that  the  burst  of  creative 
activity  in  our  literature,  through  the  first  quarter  of 
this  century,  had  about  it  in  fact  something  premature ; 
and  that  from  this  cause  its  productions  are  doomed, 
most  of  them,  in  spite  of  the  sanguine  hopes  which 
accompanied  and  do  still  accompany  them,  to  prove 
ix 


The  Sacred  Wood 

hardly  more  lasting  than  the  productions  of  far  less 
splendid  epochs.  And  this  prematureness  comes 
from  its  having  proceeded  without  having  its  proper 
data,  without  sufficient  material  to  work  with.  In 
other  words,  the  English  poetry  of  the  first  quarter  of 
this  century,  with  plenty  of  energy,  plenty  of  creative 
force,  did  not  know  enough.  This  makes  Byron  so 
empty  of  matter,  Shelley  so  incoherent,  Wordsworth 
even,  profound  as  he  is,  yet  so  wanting  in  completeness 
and  variety. 

This  judgment  of  the  Romantic  Generation  has  not, 
so  far  as  I  know,  ever  been  successfully  controverted ; 
and  it  has  not,  so  far  as  I  know,  ever  made  very 
much  impression  on  popular  opinion.  Once  a  poet 
is  accepted,  his  reputation  is  seldon  disturbed,  for 
better  or  worse.  So  little  impression  has  Arnold's 
opinion  made,  that  his  statement  will  probably  be  as 
true  of  the  first  quarter  of  the  twentieth  century  as  it 
was  of  the  nineteenth.  A  few  sentences  later,  Arnold 
articulates  the  nature  of  the  malady : 

In  the  Greece  of  Pindar  and  Sophocles,  in  the 
England  of  Shakespeare,  the  poet  lived  in  a  current 
of  ideas  in  the  highest  degree  animating  and  nourish- 
ing to  the  creative  power;  society  was,  in  the  fullest 
measure,  permeated  by  fresh  thought,  intelligent  and 
alive ;  and  this  state  of  things  is  the  true  basis  for  the 
creative  power's  exercise,  in  this  it  finds  its  data,  its 
materials,  truly  ready  for  its  hand ;  all  the  books  and 
reading  in  the  world  are  only  valuable  as  they  are 
helps  to  this. 
At  this  point  Arnold  is  indicating  the  centre  of  interest 


Introduction 

and  activity  of  the  critical  intelligence;  and  it  is  at 
this  perception,   we   may  almost  say,  that   Arnold's 
critical  activity  stopped.     In  a  society  in  which  the 
arts  were  seriously  studied,  in  which  the  art  of  writing 
was  respected,  Arnold  might  have  become  a  critic. 
How  astonishing  it  would  be,  if  a  man  like  Arnold 
had  concerned  himself  with  the  art  of  the  novel,  had 
compared  Thackeray  with  Flaubert,  had  analysed  the 
work   of   Dickens,   had   shown    his    contemporaries 
exactly  why  the  author  of  Amos  Barton  is  a  more 
serious  writer  than  Dickens,  and  why  the  author  of 
La  Chartreuse  de  Parme  is  more  serious  than  either  ? 
In  Culture  and  Anarchy \  in  Literature  and  Dogma, 
Arnold  was  not  occupied  so  much  in  establishing  a 
criticism  as  in  attacking  the  uncritical.     The  difference 
is  that  while  in  constructive  work  something  can  be 
done,  destructive  work  must  incessantly  be  repeated ; 
and  furthermore  Arnold,  in  his  destruction,  went  for 
game  outside  of  the  literary  preserve  altogether,  much 
of  it  political  game  untouched  and  inviolable  by  ideas. 
This  activity  of  Arnold's  we  must  regret;   it  might 
perhaps  have  been  carried  on  as  effectively,  if  riot 
quite  so  neatly,  by  some  disciple  (had  there  been  one) 
in  an  editorial  position  on  a  newspaper.     Arnold  is 
not  to  be  blamed :  he  wasted  his  strength,  as  men  of 
superior  ability  sometimes  do,  because  he  saw  some- 
thing to  be  done  and  no  one  else  to  do  it.     The 
temptation,  to  any  man  who  is  interested  in  ideas  and 
primarily  in  literature,  to  put  literature  into  the  corner 
xi 


The  Sacred  Wood 

until  he  has  cleaned  up  the  whole  country  first,  is 
almost  irresistible.  Some  persons,  like  Mr.  Wells 
and  Mr.  Chesterton,  have  succeeded  so  well  in  this 
latter  profession  of  setting  the  house  in  order,  and 
have  attracted  so  much  more  attention  than  Arnold, 
that  we  must  conclude  that  it  is  indeed  their  proper 
role,  and  that  they  have  done  well  for  themselves  in 
laying  literature  aside. 

Not  only  is  the  critic  tempted  outside  of  criticism. 
The  criticism  proper  betrays  such  poverty  of  ideas 
and  such  atrophy  of  sensibility  that  men  who  ought 
to  preserve  their  critical  ability  for  the  improvement 
of  their  own  creative  work  are  tempted  into  criticism. 
I  do  not  intend  from  this  the  usually  silly  inference 
that  the  "  Creative  "  gift  is  "  higher  "  than  the  critical. 
When  one  creative  mind  is  better  than  another,  the 
reason  often  is  that  the  better  is  the  more  critical. 
But  the  great  bulk  of  the  work  of  criticism  could  be 
done  by  minds  of  the  second  order,  and  it  is  just 
these  minds  of  the  second  order  that  are  difficult  to 
find.     They  are  necessary  for  the  rapid  circulation  of 
ideas.      The    periodical    press  —  the    ideal    literary 
periodical — is  an  instrument  of  transport;   and  the 
literary    periodical    press    is    dependent    upon    the 
existence  of  a  sufficient  number  of  second-order  (I  do 
not  say  "second-rate,"  the  word  is  too  derogatory) 
minds    to   supply  its    material.      These    minds    are 
necessary  for  that  "current  of  ideas,"  that  "society 
permeated  by  fresh  thought,"  of  which  Arnold  speaks, 
xii 


Introduction 

It  is  a  perpetual  heresy  of  English  culture  to  believe 
that  only  the  first-order  mind,  the  Genius,  the  Great 
Man,  matters ;  that  he  is  solitary,  and  produced  best 
in  the  least  favourable  environment,  perhaps  the 
Public  School;  and  that  it  is  most  likely  a  sign  of 
inferiority  that  Paris  can  show  so  many  minds  of  the 
second  order.  If  too  much  bad  verse  is  published  in 
London,  it  does  not  occur  to  us  to  raise  our  standards, 
to  do  anything  to  educate  the  poetasters ;  the  remedy 
is,  Kill  them  off.  I  quote  from  Mr.  Edmund  Gosse : 1 

Unless  something  is  done  to  stem  this  flood  of 
poetastry  the  art  of  verse  will  become  not  merely 
superfluous,  but  ridiculous.  Poetry  is  not  a  formula 
which  a  thousand  flappers  and  hobbledehoys  ought  to 
be  able  to  master  in  a  week  without  any  training,  and 
the  mere  fact  that  it  seems  to  be  now  practised  with 
such  universal  ease  is  enough  to  prove  that  something 
has  gone  amiss  with  our  standards.  .  .  .  This  is  all 
wrong,  and  will  lead  us  down  into  the  abyss  like  so 
many  Gadarene  swine  unless  we  resist  it. 

We  quite  agree  that  poetry  is  not  a  formula.  But 
what  does  Mr.  Gosse  propose  to  do  about  it?  If 
Mr.  Gosse  had  found  himself  in  the  flood  of  poetastry 
in  the  reign  of  Elizabeth,  what  would  he  have  done 
about  it  ?  would  he  have  stemmed  it  ?  What  exactly 
is  this  abyss  ?  and  if  something  "  has  gone  amiss  with 
our  standards,"  is  it  wholly  the  fault  of  the  younger 
generation  that  it  is  aware  of  no  authority  that  it  must 
respect  ?  It  is  part  of  the  business  of  the  critic  to 
1  Sunday  Times,  May  30,  1920. 

xiii 


The  Sacred  Wood 

preserve  tradition — where  a  good  tradition  exists.  It 
is  part  of  his  business  to  see  literature  steadily  and  to 
see  it  whole;  and  this  is  eminently  to  see  it  not  as 
consecrated  by  time,  but  to  see  it  beyond  time;  to 
see  the  best  work  of  our  time  and  the  best  work  of 
twenty-five  hundred  years  ago  with  the  same  eyes.1 
It  is  part  of  his  business  to  help  the  poetaster  to 
understand  his  own  limitations.  The  poetaster  who 
understands  his  own  limitations  will  be  one  of  our 
useful  second-order  minds ;  a  good  minor  poet  (some- 
thing which  is  very  rare)  or  another  good  critic.  As 
for  the  first-order  minds,  when  they  happen,  they  will 
be  none  the  worse  off  for  a  "  current  of  ideas  " ;  the 
solitude  with  which  they  will  always  and  everywhere 
be  invested  is  a  very  different  thing  from  isolation,  or 
a  monarchy  of  death. 

NOTE. — I  may  commend  as  a  model  to  critics  who 
desire  to  correct  some  of  the  poetical  vagaries  of  the 
present  age,  the  following  passage  from  a  writer  who 
cannot  be  accused  of  flaccid  leniency,  and  the  justice 
of  whose  criticism  must  be  acknowledged  even  by 
those  who  feel  a  strong  partiality  toward  the  school  of 
poets  criticized : — 

"Yet  great  labour,  directed  by  great  abilities,  is 
never  wholly  lost ;  if  they  frequently  threw  away  their 
wit  upon  false  conceits,  they  likewise  sometimes  struck 
out  unexpected  truth:  if  their  conceits  were  faf- 

1  Arnold,  it  must  be  admitted,  gives  us  often  the  impression 
of  seeing  the  masters,  whom  he  quotes,  as  canonical  literature, 
rather  than  as  masters. 

XIV 


Introduction 

fetched,  they  were  often  worth  the  carriage.  To  write 
on  their  plan,  it  was  at  least  necessary  to  read  and 
think.  No  man  could  be  born  a  metaphysical  poet, 
nor  assume  the  dignity  of  a  writer,  by  descriptions 
copied  from  descriptions,  by  imitations  borrowed  from 
imitations,  by  traditional  imagery,  and  hereditary 
similes,  by  readiness  of  rhyme,  and  volubility  of 
syllables. 

"  In  perusing  the  works  of  this  race  of  authors,  the 
mind  is  exercised  either  by  recollection  or  inquiry : 
something  already  learned  is  to  be  retrieved,  or  some- 
thing new  is  to  be  examined.  If  their  greatness 
seldom  elevates,  their  acuteness  often  surprises;  if 
the  imagination  is  not  always  gratified,  at  least  the 
powers  of  reflection  and  comparison  are  employed; 
and  in  the  mass  of  materials  which  ingenious  absurdity 
has  thrown  together,  genuine  wit  and  useful  knowledge 
may  be  sometimes  found  buried  perhaps  in  grossness 
of  expression,  but  useful  to  those  who  know  their 
value;  and  such  as,  when  they  are  expanded  to 
perspicuity,  and  polished  to  elegance,  may  give  lustre 
to  works  which  have  more  propriety  though  less 
copiousness  of  sentiment." — JOHNSON,  Life  of  Cowley. 


XV 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

INTRODUCTION ix 

THE  PERFECT  CRITIC i 

IMPERFECT  CRITICS — 

SWINBURNE  AS  CRITIC 15 

A  ROMANTIC  ARISTOCRAT      ....  22 

THE  LOCAL  FLAVOUR 29 

A  NOTE  ON  THE  AMERICAN  CRITIC     .       .  34 

THE  FRENCH  INTELLIGENCE         ...  39 

TRADITION  AND  THE  INDIVIDUAL  TALENT         .  42 

THE  POSSIBILITY  OF  A  POETIC  DRAMA       .       .  54 

EURIPIDES  AND  PROFESSOR  MURRAY  ...  64 
RHETORIC  AND  POETIC  DRAMA    .       .       .       .71 

NOTES  ON  THE  BLANK  VERSE  OF  CHRISTOPHER 

MARLOWE 78 

HAMLET  AND  His  PROBLEMS       ....  87 
xvii 


The  Sacred  Wood 

PAGE 

BEN  JONSON    .       . 95 

PHILIP  MASSINGER 112 

SWINBURNE  AS  POET 131 

BLAKE 137 

DANTE 144 


XVlll 


THE    SACRED    WOOD 


THE  SACRED  WOOD 

The  Perfect  Critic          *>       o       o 


"Eriger  en  lois  ses  impressions  personnelles,  c'est  le  grand 
effort  d'un  homme  s'il  est  sincere. " — Lettres  &  FAmazonc. 

/COLERIDGE  was  perhaps  the  greatest  of  English 
V^/ critics,  and  in  a  sense  the  last.  After 
Coleridge  we  have  Matthew  Arnold;  but  Arnold — 
I  think  it  will  be  conceded — was  rather  a  propa- 
gandist for  criticism  than  a  critic,  a  popularizer  rather 
than  a  creator  of  ideas.  So  long  as  this  island 
remains  an  island  (and  we  are  no  nearer  the  Con- 
tinent than  were  Arnold's  contemporaries)  the  work 
of  Arnold  will  be  important ;  it  is  still  a  bridge  across 
the  Channel,  and  it  will  always  have  been  good  sense. 
Since  Arnold's  attempt  to  correct  his  countrymen, 
English  criticism  has  followed  two  directions.  When 
a  distinguished  critic  observed  recently,  in  a  news- 
paper article,  that  "  poetry  is  the  most  highly  organ- 
ized form  of  intellectual  activity,"  we  were  conscious 
that  we  were  reading  neither  Coleridge  nor  Arnold. 
Not  only  have  the  words  "  organized"  and  "activity," 
occurring  together  in  this  phrase,  that  familiar  vague 
suggestion  of  the  scientific  vocabulary  which  is 
characteristic  of  modern  writing,  but  one  asked 

A  I 


The  Sacred  Wood 

questions  which  Coleridge  and  Arnold  would  not 
have  permitted  one  to  ask.  How  is  it,  for  in- 
stance, that  poetry  is  more  "  highly  organized  "  than 
astronomy,  physics,  or  pure  mathematics,  which  we 
imagine  to  be,  in  relation  to  the  scientist  who  prac- 
tises them,  "  intellectual  activity "  of  a  pretty  highly 
organized  type  ?  "  Mere  strings  of  words,"  our  critic 
continues  with  felicity  and  truth,  "  flung  like  dabs  of 
paint  across  a  blank  canvas,  may  awaken  surprise  .  .  . 
but  have  no  significance  whatever  in  the  history  of 
literature."  The  phrases  by  which  Arnold  is  best 
known  may  be  inadequate,  they  may  assemble  more 
doubts  than  they  dispel,  but  they  usually  have  some 
meaning.  And  if  a  phrase  like  "the  most  highly 
organized  form  of  intellectual  activity  "  is  the  highest 
organization  of  thought  of  which  contemporary  criti- 
cism, in  a  distinguished  representative,  is  capable, 
then,  we  conclude,  modern  criticism  is  degenerate. 

The  verbal  disease  above  noticed  may  be  reserved 
for  diagnosis  by  and  by.  It  is  not  a  disease  from 
which  Mr.  Arthur  Symons  (for  the  quotation  was,  of 
course,  not  from  Mr.  Symons)  notably  suffers.  Mr. 
Symons  represents  the  other  tendency ;  he  is  a  repre- 
sentative of  what  is  always  called  "  aesthetic  criticism  " 
or  "  impressionistic  criticism."  And  it  is  this  form  of 
criticism  which  I  propose  to  examine  at  once.  Mr. 
Symons,  the  critical  successor  of  Pater,  and  partly  of 
Swinburne  (I  fancy  that  the  phrase  "  sick  or  sorry  "  is 
the  common  property  of  all  three),  is  the  "  impression- 
istic critic."  He,  if  anyone,  would  be  said  to  expose 
a  sensitive  and  cultivated  mind — cultivated,  that  is, 
by  the  accumulation  of  a  considerable  variety  of  im- 
pressions from  all  the  arts  and  several  languages — 

2 


The  Perfect  Critic 

before  an  "  object " ;  and  his  criticism,  if  anyone's, 
would  be  said  to  exhibit  to  us,  like  the  plate,  the 
faithful  record  of  the  impressions,  more  numerous  or 
more  refined  than  our  own,  upon  a  mind  more  sensi- 
tive than  our  own.  A  record,  we  observe,  which  is 
also  an  interpretation,  a  translation ;  for  it  must  itself 
impose  impressions  upon  us,  and  these  impressions 
are  as  much  created  as  transmitted  by  the  criticism. 
I  do  not  say  at  once  that  this  is  Mr.  Symons ;  but  it 
is  the  "  impressionistic  "  critic,  and  the  impressionistic 
critic  is  supposed  to  be  Mr.  Symons. 

At  hand  is  a  volume  which  we  may  test.1  Ten  of 
these  thirteen  essays  deal  with  single  plays  of 
Shakespeare,  and  it  is  therefore  fair  to  take  one 
of  these  ten  as  a  specimen  of  the  book : 

Antony  and  Cleopatra  is  the  most  wonderful,  I 
think,  of  all  Shakespeare's  plays  .  .  . 

and  Mr.  Symons  reflects  that  Cleopatra  is  the  most 
wonderful  of  all  women : 

The  queen  who  ends  the  dynasty  of  the  Ptolemies 
has  been  the  star  of  poets,  a  malign  star  shedding 
baleful  light,  from  Horace  and  Propertius  down  to 
Victor  Hugo ;  and  it  is  not  to  poets  only  .  .  . 

What,  we  ask,  is  this  for?  as  a  page  on  Cleopatra, 
and  on  her  possible  origin  in  the  dark  lady  of  the 
Sonnets,  unfolds  itself.  And  we  rind,  gradually,  that 
this  is  not  an  essay  on  a  work  of  art  or  a  work  of 
intellect ;  but  that  Mr.  Symons  is  living  through  the 
play  as  one  might  live  it  through  in  the  theatre; 
recounting,  commenting : 

In  her  last  days  Cleopatra  touches  a  certain  eleva- 
1  Studies  in  Elizabethan  Drama.     By  Arthur  Symons. 

3 


The  Sacred  Wood 

tion  .  .  .  she  would  die  a  thousand  times,  rather 
than  live  to  be  a  mockery  and  a  scorn  in  men's 
mouths  .  .  .  she  is  a  woman  to  the  last  ...  so 
she  dies  .  .  .  the  play  ends  with  a  touch  of  grave 
pity  .  .  . 

Presented  in  this  rather  unfair  way,  torn  apart  like 
the  leaves  of  anlartichoke,  the  impressions  of  Mr. 
Symons  come  to  resemble  a  common  type  of  popular 
literary  lecture,  in  which  the  stories  of  plays  or  novels 
are  retold,  the  motives  of  the  characters  set  forth,  and 
the  work  of  art  therefore  made  easier  for  the  beginner. 
But  this  is  not  Mr.  Symons'  reason  for  writing.  The 
reason  why  we  find  a  similarity  between  his  essay  and 
this  form  of  education  is  that  Antony  and  Cleopatra  is 
a  play  with  which  we  are  pretty  well  acquainted, 
and  of  which  we  have,  therefore,  our  own  impressions. 
We  can  please  ourselves  with  our  own  impressions  of 
the  characters  and  their  emotions;  and  we  do  not 
find  the  impressions  of  another  person,  however 
sensitive,  very  significant.  But  if  we  can  recall  the 
time  when  we  were  ignorant  of  the  French  sym- 
bolists, and  met  with  The  Symbolist  Movement  in 
Literature,  we  remember  that  book  as  an  introduc- 
tion to  wholly  new  feelings,  as  a  revelation.  After  we 
have  read  Verlaine  and  Laforgue  and  Rimbaud  and 
return  to  Mr.  Symons'  book,  we  may  find  that  our 
own  impressions  dissent  from  his.  The  book  has  not, 
perhaps,  a  permanent  value  for  the  one  reader,  but  it 
has  led  to  results  of  permanent  importance  for  him. 

The  question  is  not  whether  Mr.  Symons'  impressions 

are  "  true  "  or  "  false."     So  far  as  you  can  isolate  the 

"  impression,"  the  pure  feeling,  it  is,  of  course,  neither 

true  nor  false.     The  point  is  that  you  never  rest  at 

4 


The  Perfect  Critic 

the  pure  feeling ;  you  react  in  one  of  two  ways,  or, 
as  I  believe  Mr.  Symons  does,  in  a  mixture  of  the  two 
ways.  The  moment  you  try  to  put  the  impressions 
into  words,  you  either  begin  to  analyse  and  construct, 
to  "  e*riger  en  lois,"  or  you  begin  to  create  something 
else.  It  is  significant  that  Swinburne,  by  whose 
poetry  Mr.  Symons  may  at  one  time  have  been 
influenced,  is  one  man  in  his  poetry  and  a  different 
man  in  his  criticism ;  to  this  extent  and  in  this 
respect  only,  that  he  is  satisfying  a  different  impulse  ; 
he  is  criticizing,  expounding,  arranging.  You  may  say 
this  is  not  the  criticism  of  a  critic,  that  it  is  emotional, 
not  intellectual — though  of  this  there  are  two  opinions, 
but  it  is  in  the  direction  of  analysis  and  construction, 
a  beginning  to  "  £riger  en  lois,"  and  not  in  the  direc- 
tion of  creation.  So  I  infer  that  Swinburne  found  an 
adequate  outlet  for  the  creative  impulse  in  his  poetry ; 
and  none  of  it  was  forced  back  and  out  through  his 
critical  prose.  The  style  of  the  latter  is  essentially 
a  prose  style ;  and  Mr.  Symons'  prose  is  much  more 
like  Swinburne's  poetry  than  it  is  like  his  prose. 
I  imagine — though  here  one's  thought  is  moving  in 
almost  complete  darkness — that  Mr.  Symons  is  far 
more  disturbed,  far  more  profoundly  affected,  by  his 
reading  than  was  Swinburne,  who  responded  rather 
by  a  violent  and  immediate  and  comprehensive 
burst  of  admiration  which  may  have  left  him  internally 
unchanged.  The  disturbance  in  Mr.  Symons  is 
almost,  but  not  quite,  to  the  point  of  creating;  the 
reading  sometimes  fecundates  his  emotions  to  pro- 
duce something  new  which  is  not  criticism,  but  is  not 
the  expulsion,  the  ejection,  the  birth  of  creativeness. 
The  type  is  not  uncommon,  although  Mr.  Symons 

5 


The  Sacred  Wood 

is  far  superior  to  most  of  the  type.  Some  writers  are 
essentially  of  the  type  that  reacts  in  excess  of  the 
stimulus,  making  something  new  out  of  the  impres- 
sions, but  suffer  from  a  defect  of  vitality  or  an 
obscure  obstruction  which  prevents  nature  from 
taking  its  course.  Their  sensibility  alters  the  object, 
but  never  transforms  it.  Their  reaction  is  that  of  the 
ordinary  emotional  person  developed  to  an  exceptional 
degree.  For  this  ordinary  emotional  person,  ex- 
periencing a  work  of  art,  has  a  mixed  critical  and 
creative  reaction.  It  is  made  up  of  comment  and 
opinion,  and  also  new  emotions  which  are  vaguely 
applied  to  his  own  life.  The  sentimental  person,  in 
whom  a  work  of  art  arouses  all  sorts  of  emotions 
which  have  nothing  to  do  with  that  work  of  art 
whatever,  but  are  accidents  of  personal  association, 
is  an  incomplete  artist.  For  in  an  artist  these  sug- 
gestions made  by  a  work  of  art,  which  are  purely 
personal,  become  fused  with  a  multitude  of  other 
suggestions  from  multitudinous  experience,  and 
result  in  the  production  of  a  new  object  which  is 
no  longer  purely  personal,  because  it  is  a  work  of 
art  itself. 

It  would  be  rash  to  speculate,  and  is  perhaps 
impossible  to  determine,  what  is  unfulfilled  in  Mr. 
Symons'  charming  verse  that  overflows  into  his 
critical  prose.  Certainly  we  may  say  that  in 
Swinburne's  verse  the  circuit  of  impression  and 
expression  is  complete ;  and  Swinburne  was  therefore 
able,  in  his  criticism,  to  be  more  a  critic  than  Mr. 
Symons.  This  gives  us  an  intimation  why  the  artist 
is — each  within  his  own  limitations — oftenest  to  be 
depended  upon  as  a  critic;  his  criticism  will  be 
6 


The  Perfect  Critic 

criticism,  and  not  the  satisfaction  of  a  suppressed 
creative  wish — which,  in  most  other  persons,  is  apt  to 
interfere  fatally. 

Before  considering  what  the  proper  critical  reaction 
of  artistic  sensibility  is,  how  far  criticism  is  "  feeling  " 
and  how  far  "  thought,"  and  what  sort  of  "  thought " 
is  permitted,  it  may  be  instructive  to  prod  a  little 
into  that  other  temperament,  so  different  from  Mr. 
Symons',  which  issues  in  generalities  such  as  that 
quoted  near  the  beginning  of  this  article. 

II 

"L'ecrivain  de  style  abstrait  est  presque  toujours  un  senti- 
mental, du  moins  un  sensitif.  L'ecriyain  artiste  n'est  presque 
jamais  un  sentimental,  et  tres  rarement  un  sensitif." — Le 
Probteme  du  Style. 

The  statement  already  quoted,  that  "  poetry  is  the 
most  highly  organized  form  of  intellectual  activity," 
may  be  taken  as  a  specimen  of  the  abstract  style  in 
criticism.  The  confused  distinction  which  exists 
in  most  heads  between  "abstract"  and  "concrete" 
is  due  not  so  much  to  a  manifest  fact  of  the  existence 
of  two  types  of  mind,  an  abstract  and  a  concrete,  as 
to  the  existence  of  another  type  of  mind,  the  verbal, 
or  philosophic.  I,  of  course,  do  not  imply  any 
general  condemnation  of  philosophy;  I  am,  for  the 
moment,  using  the  word  "  philosophic  "  to  cover  the 
unscientific  ingredients  of  philosophy ;  to  cover,  in 
fact,  the  greater  part  of  the  philosophic  output  of 
the  last  hundred  years.  There  are  two  ways  in  which 
a  word  may  be  "  abstract."  It  may  have  (the  word 
"activity,"  for  example)  a  meaning  which  cannot 
7 


The  Sacred  Wood 

be  grasped  by  appeal  to  any  of  the  senses ;  its  appre- 
hension  may    require    a   deliberate   suppression   of 
analogies  of  visual  or  muscular  experience,  which  is 
none  the  less  an  effort  of  imagination.     "  Activity  " 
will  mean  for  the  trained  scientist,  if  he  employ  the 
term,   either  nothing  at  all  or  something  still  more 
exact   than  anything   it   suggests   to  us.     If  we  are 
allowed  to  accept  certain  remarks  of  Pascal  and  Mr. 
Bertrand  Russell  about  mathematics,  we  believe  that 
the  mathematician   deals    with    objects — if  he   will 
permit  us  to  call  them  objects — which  directly  affect 
his  sensibility.     And   during  a  good  part  of  history 
the  philosopher  endeavoured  to   deal  with  objects 
which  he  believed  to  be  of  the  same  exactness   as 
the  mathematician's.     Finally  Hegel  arrived,  and  if 
not  perhaps   the  first,   he   was   certainly    the   most 
prodigious    exponent    of  emotional   systematization, 
dealing  with   his  emotions  as  if  they   were  definite 
objects   which   had    aroused    those   emotions.     His 
followers  have  as  a  rule  taken  for  granted  that  words 
have  definite  meanings,  overlooking  the  tendency  of 
words  to  become  indefinite  emotions.     (No  one  who 
had  not  witnessed  the  event  could  imagine  the  con- 
viction in  the  tone  of  Professor  Eucken  as  he  pounded 
the  table  and  exclaimed  Was  ist  Geist?  Geist  ist.  .  .) 
If   verbalism    were   confined  to  professional   philo- 
sophers, no  harm   would   be  done.     But  their   cor- 
ruption has  extended  very  far.     Compare  a  mediaeval 
theologian  or  mystic,  compare  a  seventeenth-century 
preacher,  with  any  "  liberal "  sermon  since  Schleier- 
macher,    and   you    will    observe    that    words    have 
changed  their  meanings.     What   they  have  lost  is 
definite,  and  what  they  have  gained  is  indefinite. 
8 


The  Perfect  Critic 

The  vast  accumulations  of  knowledge — -or  at  least 
of  information — deposited  by  the  nineteenth  century 
have  been  responsible  for  an  equally  vast  ignorance. 
When  there  is  so  much  to  be  known,  when  there  are 
so  many  fields  of  knowledge  in  which  the  same  words 
are  used  with  different  meanings,  when  every  one 
knows  a  little  about  a  great  many  things,  it  becomes 
increasingly  difficult  for  anyone  to  know  whether  he 
knows  what  he  is  talking  about  or  not.  And  when 
we  do  not  know,  or  when  we  do  not  know  enough, 
we  tend  always  to  substitute  emotions  for  thoughts. 
The  sentence  so  frequently  quoted  in  this  essay  will 
serve  for  an  example  of  this  process  as  well  as  any, 
and  may  be  profitably  contrasted  with  the  opening 
phrases  of  the  Posterior  Analytics.  Not  only  all 
knowledge,  but  all  feeling,  is  in  perception.  The 
inventor  of  poetry  as  the  most  highly  organized  form 
of  intellectual  activity  was  not  engaged  in  perceiving 
when  he  composed  this  definition  ;  he  had  nothing 
to  be  aware  of  except  his  own  emotion  about 
"poetry."  He  was,  in  fact,  absorbed  in  a  very 
different  "activity"  not  only  from  that  of  Mr. 
Symons,  but  from  that  of  Aristotle. 

Aristotle  is  a  person  who  has  suffered  from  the 
adherence  of  persons  who  must  be  regarded  less  as 
his  disciples  than  as  his  sectaries.  One  must  be 
firmly  distrustful  of  accepting  Aristotle  in  a  canonical 
spirit ;  this  is  to  lose  the  whole  living  force  of  him. 
He  was  primarily  a  man  of  not  only  remarkable  but 
universal  intelligence;  and  universal  intelligence 
means  that  he  could  apply  his  intelligence  to  any- 
thing. The  ordinary  intelligence  is  good  only  for 
certain  classes  of  objects  ;  a  brilliant  man  of  science, 
9 


The  Sacred  Wood 

if  he  is  interested  in  poetry  at  all,  may  conceive 
grotesque  judgments:  like  one  poet  because  he 
reminds  him  of  himself,  or  another  because  he 
expresses  emotions  which  he  admires ;  he  may  use 
art,  in  fact,  as  the  outlet  for  the  egotism  which  is 
suppressed  in  his  own  speciality.  But  Aristotle  had 
none  of  these  impure  desires  to  satisfy ;  in  whatever 
sphere  of  interest,  he  looked  solely  and  steadfastly  at 
the  object ;  in  his  short  and  broken  treatise  he  pro- 
vides an  eternal  example — not  of  laws,  or  even  of 
method,  for  there  is  no  method  except  to  be  very 
intelligent,  but  of  intelligence  itself  swiftly  operating 
the  analysis  of  sensation  to  the  point  of  principle  and 
definition. 

It  is  far  less  Aristotle  than  Horace  who  has  been 
the  model  for  criticism  up  to  the  nineteenth  century. 
A  precept,  such  as  Horace  or  Boileau  gives  us,  is 
merely  an  unfinished  analysis.  It  appears  as  a  law, 
a  rule,  because  it  does  not  appear  in  its  most  general 
form ;  it  is  empirical.  When  we  understand  necessity, 
as  Spinoza  knew,  we  are  free  because  we  assent. 
The  dogmatic  critic,  who  lays  down  a  rule,  who 
affirms  a  value,  has  left  his  labour  incomplete.  Such 
statements  may  often  be  justifiable  as  a  saving  of 
time;  but  in  matters  of  great  importance  the  critic 
must  not  coerce,  and  he  must  not  make  judgments 
of  worse  and  better.  He  must  simply  elucidate  :  the 
reader  will  form  the  correct  judgment  for  himself. 

And  again,  the  purely  "  technical "  critic — the  critic, 
that  is,  who  writes  to  expound  some  novelty  or  impart 
some  lesson  to  practitioners  of  an  art — can  be  called  a 
critic  only  in  a  narrow  sense.  He  may  be  analysing 
perceptions  and  the  means  for  arousing  perceptions, 
IO 


The  Perfect  Critic 

but  his  aim  is  limited  and  is  not  the  disinterested 
exercise  of  intelligence.  The  narrowness  of  the  aim 
makes  easier  the  detection  of  the  merit  or  feebleness 
of  the  work ;  even  of  these  writers  there  are  very  few 
— so  that  their  "criticism"  is  of  great  importance 
within  its  limits.  So  much  suffices  for  Campion. 
Dryden  is  far  more  disinterested ;  he  displays  much  free 
intelligence;  and  yet  even  Dryden — or  any  literary 
critic  of  the  seventeenth  century — is  not  quite  a  free 
mind,  compared,  for  instance,  with  such  a  mind  as 
Rochefoucauld's.  There  is  always  a  tendency  to 
legislate  rather  than  to  inquire,  to  revise  accepted 
laws,  even  to  overturn,  but  to  reconstruct  out  of  the 
same  material.  And  the  free  intelligence  is  that  which 
is  wholly  devoted  to  inquiry. 

Coleridge,  again,  whose  natural  abilities,  and  some 
of  whose  performances,  are  probably  more  remarkable 
than  those  of  any  other  modern  critic,  cannot  be 
estimated  as  an  intelligence  completely  free.  The 
nature  of  the  restraint  in  his  case  is  quite  different 
from  that  which  limited  the  seventeenth-century 
critics,  and  is  much  more  personal.  Coleridge's 
metaphysical  interest  was  quite  genuine,  and  was, 
like  most  metaphysical  interest,  an  affair  of  his 
emotions.  But  a  literary  critic  should  have  no 
emotions  except  those  immediately  provoked  by  a 
work  of  art — and  these  (as  I  have  already  hinted)  are, 
when  valid,  perhaps  not  to  be  called  emotions  at  all. 
Coleridge  is  apt  to  take  leave  of  the  data  of  criticism, 
and  arouse  the  suspicion  that  he  has  been  diverted 
into  a  metaphysical  hare-and-hounds.  His  end  does 
not  always  appear  to  be  the  return  to  the  work  of  art 
with  improved  perception  and  intensified,  because 
II 


The  Sacred  Wood 

more  conscious,  enjoyment;  his  centre  of  interest 
changes,  his  feelings  are  impure.  In  the  derogatory 
sense  he  is  more  "  philosophic  "  than  Aristotle.  For 
everything  that  Aristotle  says  illuminates  the  litera- 
ture which  is  the  occasion  for  saying  it ;  but  Coleridge 
only  now  and  then.  It  is  one  more  instance  of  the 
pernicious  effect  of  emotion. 

Aristotle  had  what  is  called  the  scientific  mind — 
a  mind  which,  as  it  is  rarely  found  among  scientists 
except  in  fragments,  might  better  be  called  the  in- 
telligent mind.  For  there  is  no  other  intelligence 
than  this,  and  so  far  as  artists  and  men  of  letters  are 
intelligent  (we  may  doubt  whether  the  level  of  intelli- 
gence among  men  of  letters  is  as  high  as  among  men 
of  science)  their  intelligence  is  of  this  kind.  Sainte- 
Beuve  was  a  physiologist  by  training ;  but  it  is  prob- 
able that  his  mind,  like  that  of  the  ordinary  scientific 
specialist,  was  limited  in  its  interest,  and  that  this  was 
not,  primarily,  an  interest  in  art.  If  he  was  a  critic, 
there  is  no  doubt  that  he  was  a  very  good  one ;  but 
we  may  conclude  that  he  earned  some  other  name. 
Of  all  modern  critics,  perhaps  Remy  de  Gourmont 
had  most  of  the  general  intelligence  of  Aristotle. 
An  amateur,  though  an  excessively  able  amateur, 
in  physiology,  he  combined  to  a  remarkable  degree 
sensitiveness,  erudition,  sense  of  fact  and  sense  of 
history,  and  generalizing  power. 

We  assume  the  gift  of  a  superior  sensibility.  And 
for  sensibility  wide  and  profound  reading  does  not 
mean  merely  a  more  extended  pasture.  There  is  not 
merely  an  increase  of  understanding,  leaving  the 
original  acute  impression  unchanged.  The  new  im- 
pressions modify  the  impressions  received  from  the 
12 


The  Perfect  Critic 

objects  already  known.  An  impression  needs  to  be 
constantly  refreshed  by  new  impressions  in  order  that 
it  may  persist  at  all ;  it  needs  to  take  its  place  in  a 
system  of  impressions.  And  this  system  tends  to 
become  articulate  in  a  generalized  statement  of 
literary  beauty. 

There  are,  for  instance,  many  scattered  lines  and 
tercets  in  the  Divine  Comedy  which  are  capable  of 
transporting  even  a  quite  uninitiated  reader,  just  suffi- 
ciently acquainted  with  the  roots  of  the  language  to 
decipher  the  meaning,  to  an  impression  of  overpower- 
ing beauty.  This  impression  may  be  so  deep  that  no 
subsequent  study  and  understanding  will  intensify  it. 
But  at  this  point  the  impression  is  emotional;  the 
reader  in  the  ignorance  which  we  postulate  is  unable 
to  distinguish  the  poetry  from  an  emotional  state 
aroused  in  himself  by  the  poetry,  a  state  which  may 
be  merely  an  indulgence  of  his  own  emotions.  The 
poetry  may  be  an  accidental  stimulus.  The  end  of 
the  enjoyment  of  poetry  is  a  pure  contemplation  from 
which  all  the  accidents  of  personal  emotion  are  re- 
moved ;  thus  we  aim  to  see  the  object  as  it  really  is  and 
find  a  meaning  for  the  words  of  Arnold.  And  without 
a  labour  which  is  largely  a  labour  of  the  intelligence, 
we  are  unable  to  attain  that  stage  of  vision  amor 
intellectualis  Dei. 

Such  considerations,  cast  in  this  general  form,  may 
appear  commonplaces.  But  I  believe  that  it  is  always 
opportune  to  call  attention  to  the  torpid  superstition 
that  appreciation  is  one  thing,  and  "intellectual" 
criticism  something  else.  Appreciation  in  popular 
psychology  is  one  faculty,  and  criticism  another,  an 
arid  cleverness  building  theoretical  scaffolds  upon 

13 


The  Sacred  Wood 

one's  own  perceptions  or  those  of  others.  On  the 
contrary,  the  true  generalization  is  not  something 
superposed  upon  an  accumulation  of  perceptions ;  the 
perceptions  do  not,  in  a  really  appreciative  mind, 
accumulate  as  a  mass,  but  form  themselves  as  a 
structure ;  and  criticism  is  the  statement  in  language 
of  this  structure;  it  is  a  development  of  sensibility. 
The  bad  criticism,  on  the  other  hand,  is  that  which  is 
nothing  but  an  expression  of  emotion.  And  emotional 
people — such  as  stockbrokers,  politicians,  men  of 
science — and  a  few  people  who  pride  themselves  on 
being  unemotional — detest  or  applaud  great  writers 
such  as  Spinoza  or  Stendhal  because  of  their  "  frigidity." 
The  writer  of  the  present  essay  once  committed 
himself  to  the  statement  that  "The  poetic  critic  is 
criticizing  poetry  in  order  to  create  poetry."  He  is 
now  inclined  to  believe  that  the  "  historical "  and  the 
"  philosophical "  critics  had  better  be  called  historians 
and  philosophers  quite  simply.  As  for  the  rest,  there 
are  merely  various  degrees  of  intelligence.  It  is  fatuous 
to  say  that  criticism  is  for  the  sake  of  "  creation  "  or 
creation  for  the  sake  of  criticism.  It  is  also  fatuous 
to  assume  that  there  are  ages  of  criticism  and  ages  of 
creativeness,  as  if  by  plunging  ourselves  into  intel- 
lectual darkness  we  were  in  better  hope  of  rinding 
spiritual  light.  The  two  directions  of  sensibility  are 
complementary ;  and  as  sensibility  is  rare,  unpopular, 
and  desirable,  it  is  to  be  expected  that  the  critic  and 
the  creative  artist  should  frequently  be  the  same 
person. 


Imperfect  Critics  o       *>       *>       o 

SWINBURNE  AS  CRITIC 

THREE  conclusions  at  least  issue  from  the 
perusal  of  Swinburne's  critical  essays  :  Swinburne 
had  mastered  his  material,  was  more  inward  with  the 
Tudor-Stuart  dramatists  than  any  man  of  pure 
letters  before  or  since;  he  is  a  more  reliable  guide 
to  them  than  Hazlitt,  Coleridge,  or  Lamb;  and  his 
perception  of  relative  values  is  almost  always  correct. 
Against  these  merits  we  may  oppose  two  objections  : 
the  style  is  the  prose  style  of  Swinburne,  and  the 
content  is  not,  in  an  exact  sense,  criticism.  The 
faults  of  style  are,  of  course,  personal ;  the  tumultuous 
outcry  of  adjectives,  the  headstrong  rush  of  undis- 
ciplined sentences,  are  the  index  to  the  impatience 
and  perhaps  laziness  of  a  disorderly  mind.  But  the 
style  has  one  positive  merit:  it  allows  us  to  know 
that  Swinburne  was  writing  not  to  establish  a  critical 
reputation,  not  to  instruct  a  docile  public,  but  as  a 
poet  his  notes  upon  poets  whom  he  admired.  And 
whatever  our  opinion  of  Swinburne's  verse,  the  notes 
upon  poets  by  a  poet  of  Swinburne's  dimensions 
must  be  read  with  attention  and  respect. 

In  saying  that  Swinburne's  essays  have  the  value  of 
notes  of  an  important  poet  upon  important  poets,  we 
must  place  a  check  upon  our  expectancy.  He  read 
everything,  and  he  read  with  the  single  interest  in 

15 


The  Sacred  Wood 

finding  literature.  The  critics  of  the  romantic  period 
were  pioneers,  and  exhibit  the  fallibility  of  discoverers. 
The  selections  of  Lamb  are  a  successful  effort  of 
good  taste,  but  anyone  who  has  referred  to  them 
after  a  thorough  reading  of  any  of  the  poets  included 
must  have  found  that  some  of  the  best  passages — 
which  must  literally  have  stared  Lamb  in  the  face — 
are  omitted,  while  sometimes  others  of  less  value 
are  included.  Hazlitt,  who  committed  himself  to 
the  judgment  that  the  Mat<Ts  Tragedy  is  one  of 
the  poorest  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher's  plays,  has 
no  connected  message  to  deliver.  Coleridge's  re- 
marks—  too  few  and  scattered  —  have  permanent 
truth ;  but  on  some  of  the  greatest  names  he  passes 
no  remark,  and  of  some  of  the  best  plays  was  perhaps 
ignorant  or  ill-informed.  But  compared  with  Swin- 
burne, Coleridge  writes  much  more  as  a  poet  might 
be  expected  to  write  about  poets.  Of  Massinger's 
verse  Swinburne  says  : 

It  is  more  serviceable,  more  businesslike,  more 
eloquently  practical,  and  more  rhetorically  effusive 
— but  never  effusive  beyond  the  bounds  of  effective 
rhetoric — than  the  style  of  any  Shakespearean  or  of 
any  Jonsonian  dramatist. 

It  is  impossible  to  tell  whether  Webster  would 
have  found  the  style  of  Massinger  more  "  serviceable  " 
than  his  own  for  the  last  act  of  the  White  Devil^ 
and  indeed  difficult  to  decide  what  "serviceable" 
here  means;  but  it  is  quite  clear  what  Coleridge 
means  when  he  says  that  Massinger's  style 

is  much  more  easily  constructed  [than  Shakespeare's], 
and  may  be  more  successfully  adopted  by  writers  in 
the  present  day. 

16 


Imperfect  Critics 

Coleridge  is  writing  as  a  professional  with  his  eye  on 
the  technique.  I  do  not  know  from  what  writing 
of  Coleridge  Swinburne  draws  the  assertion  that 
"  Massinger  often  deals  in  exaggerated  passion,"  but 
in  the  essay  from  which  Swinburne  quotes  elsewhere 
Coleridge  merely  speaks  of  the  "  unnaturally  irrational 
passions,"  a  phrase  much  more  defensible.  Upon  the 
whole,  the  two  poets  are  in  harmony  upon  the  subject 
of  Massinger ;  and  although  Coleridge  has  said  more 
in  five  pages,  and  said  it  more  clearly,  than  Swinburne 
in  thirty-nine,  the  essay  of  Swinburne  is  by  no  means 
otiose :  it  is  more  stimulating  than  Coleridge's,  and 
the  stimulation  is  never  misleading.  With  all  his 
superlatives,  his  judgment,  if  carefully  scrutinized, 
appears  temperate  and  just. 

With  all  his  justness  of  judgment,  however,  Swin- 
burne is  an  appreciator  and  not  a  critic.  In  the 
whole  range  of  literature  covered,  Swinburne  makes 
hardly  more  than  two  judgments  which  can  be 
reversed  or  even  questioned:  one,  that  Lyly  is 
insignificant  as  a  dramatist,  and  the  other,  that 
Shirley  was  probably  unaffected  by  Webster.  The 
Cardinal  is  not  a  cast  of  the  Duchess  of  Malfi, 
certainly ;  but  when  Shirley  wrote 

the  mist  is  risen,  and  there's  none 
To  steer  my  wandering  bark.     (Dies.) 

he  was  probably  affected  by 

My  soul,  like  to  a  ship  in  a  black  storm, 
Is  driven,  I  know  not  whither. 

Swinburne's  judgment  is  generally  sound,  his  taste 
sensitive  and   discriminating.    And  we   cannot   say 
that  his  thinking   is  faulty  or  perverse — up  to   the 
B  17 


The  Sacred  Wood 

point  at  which  it  is  thinking.  But  Swinburne  stops 
thinking  just  at  the  moment  when  we  are  most 
zealous  to  go  on.  And  this  arrest,  while  it  does  not 
vitiate  his  work,  makes  it  an  introduction  rather  than 
a  statement. 

We  are  aware,  after  the  Contemporaries  of 
Shakespeare  and  the  Age  of  Shakespeare  and  the 
books  on  Shakespeare  and  Jonson,  that  there  is 
something  unsatisfactory  in  the  way  in  which  Swin- 
burne was  interested  in  these  people;  we  suspect 
that  his  interest  was  never  articulately  formulated  in 
his  mind  or  consciously  directed  to  any  purpose. 
He  makes  his  way,  or  loses  it,  between  two  paths  of 
definite  direction.  He  might  as  a  poet  have  con- 
centrated his  attention  upon  the  technical  problems 
solved  or  tackled  by  these  men ;  he  might  have 
traced  for  us  the  development  of  blank  verse  from 
Sackville  to  the  mature  Shakespeare,  and  its  de- 
generation from  Shakespeare  to  Milton.  Or  he  might 
have  studied  through  the  literature  to  the  mind  of 
that  century ;  he  might,  by  dissection  and  analysis, 
have  helped  us  to  some  insight  into  the  feeling  and 
thought  which  we  seem  to  have  left  so  far  away.  In 
either  case,  you  would  have  had  at  least  the  excite- 
ment of  following  the  movements  of  an  important 
mind  groping  towards  important  conclusions.  As  it 
is,  there  are  to  be  no  conclusions,  except  that 
Elizabethan  literature  is  very  great,  and  that  you  can 
have  pleasure  and  even  ecstasy  from  it,  because  a 
sensitive  poetic  talent  has  had  the  experience.  One 
is  in  risk  of  becoming  fatigued  by  a  hubbub  that  does 
not  march ;  the  drum  is  beaten,  but  the  procession 
does  not  advance. 

18 


Imperfect  Critics 

I£  for  example,  Swinburne's  interest  was  in  poetry, 
why  devote  an  essay  to  Brome  ?  "  The  opening  scene 
of  the  Sparagus  Garden,  says  Swinburne,  "is  as 
happily  humorous  and  as  vividly  natural  as  that  of 
any  more  famous  comedy."  The  scene  is  both 
humorous  and  natural.  Brome  deserves  to  be  more 
read  than  he  is,  and  first  of  all  to  be  more  accessible 
than  he  is.  But  Swinburne  ought  to  suggest  or  imply 
(I  do  not  say  impose)  a  reason  for  reading  the 
Sparagus  Garden  or  the  Antipodes,  more  sufficient 
than  any  he  has  provided.  No  doubt  such  reason 
could  be  found. 

When  it  is  a  matter  of  pronouncing  judgment  be- 
tween two  poets,  Swinburne  is  almost  unerring.  He 
is  certainly  right  in  putting  Webster  above  Tourneur, 
Tourneur  above  Ford,  and  Ford  above  Shirley.  He 
weighs  accurately  the  good  and  evil  in  Fletcher :  he 
perceives  the  essential  theatricality,  but  his  com- 
parison of  the  Faithful  Shepherdess  with  Comus 
is  a  judgment  no  word  of  which  can  be  improved 
upon : 

The  difference  between  this  poem  [i.e.  the  Faith- 
ful Shepherdess]  and  Milton's  exquisitely  imitative 
Comus  is  the  difference  between  a  rose  with  a 
leaf  or  two  faded  or  falling,  but  still  fragrant  and 
radiant,  and  the  faultless  but  scentless  reproduction 
of  a  rose  in  academic  wax  for  the  admiration  and 
imitation  of  such  craftsmen  as  must  confine  their 
ambition  to  the  laurels  of  a  college  or  the  plaudits  of 
a  school. 

In    the    longest    and    most   important    essay   in 
the    Contemporaries   of  Shakespeare,   the    essay   on 
Chapman,  there  are  many  such  sentences  of  sound 
19 


The  Sacred  Wood 

judgment  forcibly  expressed.  The  essay  is  the  best  we 
have  on  that  great  poet.  It  communicates  the  sense 
of  dignity  and  mass  which  we  receive  from  Chapman. 
But  it  also  illustrates  Swinburne's  infirmities.  Swin- 
burne was  not  tormented  by  the  restless  desire  to 
penetrate  to  the  heart  and  marrow  of  a  poet,  any 
more  than  he  was  tormented  by  the  desire  to  render 
the  finest  shades  of  difference  and  resemblance  be- 
tween several  poets.  Chapman  is  a  difficult  author, 
as  Swinburne  says;  he  is  far  more  difficult  than 
Jonson,  to  whom  he  bears  only  a  superficial  likeness. 
He  is  difficult  beyond  his  obscurity.  He  is  difficult 
partly  through  his  possession  of  a  quality  comparatively 
deficient  in  Jonson,  but  which  was  nevertheless  a 
quality  of  the  age.  It  is  strange  that  Swinburne 
should  have  hinted  at  a  similarity  to  Jonson  and  not 
mentioned  a  far  more  striking  affinity  of  Chapman's 
— that  is,  Donne.  The  man  who  wrote 

Guise,  O  my  lord,  how  shall  I  cast  from  me 
The  bands  and  coverts  hindering  me  from  thee  ? 
The  garment  or  the  cover  of  the  mind 
The  humane  soul  is ;  of  the  soul,  the  spirit 
The  proper  robe  is  ;  of  the  spirit,  the  blood  ; 
And  of  the  blood,  the  body  is  the  shroud  : 

and 

Nothing  is  made  of  nought,  of  all  things  made, 
Their  abstract  being  a  dream  but  of  'a  shade, 

is  unquestionably  kin  to  Donne.  The  quality  in 
question  is  not  peculiar  to  Donne  and  Chapman. 
In  common  with  the  greatest — Marlowe,  Webster, 
Tourneur,  and  Shakespeare — they  had  a  quality  of 
sensuous  thought,  or  of  thinking  through  the  senses, 
or  of  the  senses  thinking,  of  which  the  exact  formula 
20 


Imperfect  Critics 

remains  to  be  defined.  If  you  look  for  it  in  Shelley 
or  Beddoes,  both  of  whom  in  very  different  ways 
recaptured  something  of  the  Elizabethan  inspiration, 
you  will  not  find  it,  though  you  may  find  other 
qualities  instead.  There  is  a  trace  of  it  only  in 
Keats,  and,  derived  from  a  different  source,  in 
Rossetti.  You  will  not  find  it  in  the  Duke  of 
Gandia.  Swinburne's  essay  would  have  been  all 
the  better  if  he  had  applied  himself  to  the  solution 
of  problems  like  this. 

He  did  not  apply  himself  to  this  sort  of  problem 
because  this  was  not  the  sort  of  problem  that  interested 
him.  The  author  of  Swinburne's  critical  essays  is 
also  the  author  of  Swinburne's  verse :  if  you  hold  the 
opinion  that  Swinburne  was  a  very  great  poet,  you 
can  hardly  deny  him  the  title  of  a  great  critic.  There 
is  the  same  curious  mixture  of  qualities  to  produce 
Swinburne's  own  effect,  resulting  in  the  same  blur, 
which  only  the  vigour  of  the  colours  fixes.  His  great 
merit  as  a  critic  is  really  one  which,  like  many  signal 
virtues,  can  be  stated  so  simply  as  to  appear  flat. 
It  is  that  he  was  sufficiently  interested  in  his  subject- 
matter  and  knew  quite  enough  about  it ;  and  this  is 
a  rare  combination  in  English  criticism.  Our  critics 
are  often  interested  in  extracting  something  from  their 
subject  which  is  not  fairly  in  it.  And  it  is  because 
this  elementary  virtue  is  so  rare  that  Swinburne  must 
take  a  very  respectable  place  as  a  critic.  Critics 
are  often  interested — but  not  quite  in  the  nominal 
subject,  often  in  something  a  little  beside  the  point ; 
they  are  often  learned — but  not  quite  to  the  point 
either.  (Swinburne  knew  some  of  the  plays  almost 
by  heart)  Can  this  particular  virtue  at  which  we 
21 


The  Sacred  Wood 

have  glanced  be  attributed  to  Walter  Pater?  or  to 
Professor  Bradley  ?  or  to  Swinburne's  editor  ? 

A  ROMANTIC  ARISTOCRAT 

It  is  impossible  to  overlook  the  merits  of  scholar- 
ship and  criticism  exhibited  by  George  Wyndham's 
posthumous  book,  and  it  is  impossible  to  deal  with 
the  book  purely  on  its  merits  of  scholarship  and 
criticism.  To  attempt  to  do  so  would  in  the  first 
place  be  unfair,  as  the  book  is  a  posthumous  work, 
and  posthumous  books  demand  some  personal  atten- 
tion to  their  writers.  This  book  is  a  collection  of 
essays  and  addresses,  arranged  in  their  present  order 
by  Mr.  Whibley ;  they  were  intended  by  their  author 
to  be  remodelled  into  a  volume  on  "romantic 
literature " ;  they  move  from  an  ingenious  search  for 
the  date  of  the  beginning  of  Romanticism,  through 
the  French  and  English  Renaissance,  to  Sir  Walter 
Scott.  In  the  second  place,  these  essays  represent 
the  literary  work  of  a  man  who  gained  his  chief 
distinction  in  political  life.  In  the  third  place,  this 
man  stands  for  a  type,  an  English  type.  The  type  is 
interesting  and  will  probably  become  extinct.  It  is 
natural,  therefore,  that  our  primary  interest  in  the 
essays  should  be  an  interest  in  George  Wyndham. 

Mr.  Charles  Whibley,  in  an  introduction  the  tone 
of  which  is  well  suited  to  the  matter,  has  several 
sentences  which  throw  light  on  Wyndham's  person- 
ality. What  issues  with  surprising  clearness  from  Mr. 
Whibley's  sketch  is  the  unity  of  Wyndham's  mind, 
the  identity  of  his  mind  as  it  engaged  in  apparently 
unrelated  occupations.  Wyndham  left  Eton  for  the 
22 


Imperfect  Critics 

army;  in  barracks  he  "taught  himself  Italian,  and 
rilled  his  leisure  with  the  reading  of  history  and 
poetry."  After  this  Coldstream  culture  there  was  a 
campaign  in  Egypt;  later,  service  in  South  Africa 
accompanied  by  a  copy  of  Virgil.  There  was  a  career 
in  the  Commons,  a  conspicuous  career  as  Irish 
Secretary.  Finally,  there  was  a  career  as  a  landowner — 
2400  acres.  And  throughout  these  careers  George 
Wyndham  went  on  not  only  accumulating  books  but 
reading  them,  and  occasionally  writing  about  them. 
He  was  a  man  of  character,  a  man  of  energy.  Mr. 
Whibley  is  quite  credible  when  he  says  : 

Literature  was  for  him  no  parergon,  no  mere  way 
of  escape  from  politics.  If  he  was  an  amateur  in 
feeling,  he  was  a  craftsman  in  execution ; 

and,  more  significantly, 

With  the  same  zest  that  he  read  and  discoursed 
upon  A  Winters  Tale  or  Troilus  and  Cressida^  he 
rode  to  hounds,  or  threw  himself  with  a  kind  of  fury 
into  a  "point  to  point,"  or  made  a  speech  at  the 
hustings,  or  sat  late  in  the  night  talking  with  a  friend. 

From  these  and  other  sentences  we  chart  the  mind  of 
George  Wyndham,  and  the  key  to  its  topography  is 
the  fact  that  his  literature  and  his  politics  and  his 
country  life  are  one  and  the  same  thing.  They  are 
not  in  separate  compartments,  they  are  one  career. 
Together  they  made  up  his  world :  literature,  politics, 
riding  to  hounds.  In  the  real  world  these  things  have 
nothing  to  do  with  each  other.  But  we  cannot 
believe  that  George  Wyndham  lived  in  the  real  world. 
And  this  is  implied  in  Mr.  Whibley's  remark  that : 

George  Wyndham  was  by  character  and  training  a 

23 


The  Sacred  Wood 

romantic.     He  looked  with  wonder  upon  the  world 
as  upon  a  fairyland. 

Here  is  the  manifestation  of  type. 

There  must  probably  be  conceded  to  history  a  few 
"  many-sided  "  men.  Perhaps  Leonardo  da  Vinci  was 
such.  George  Wyndham  was  not  a  man  on  the  scale 
of  Leonardo,  and  his  writings  give  a  very  different 
effect  from  Leonardo's  notebooks.  Leonardo  turned 
to  art  or  science,  and  each  was  what  it  was  and  not 
another  thing.  But  Leonardo  was  Leonardo :  he  had 
no  father  to  speak  of,  he  was  hardly  a  citizen,  and  he 
had  no  stake  in  the  community.  He  lived  in  no 
fairyland,  but  his  mind  went  out  and  became  a  part 
of  things.  George  Wyndham  was  Gentry.  He  was 
chivalrous,  the  world  was  an  adventure  of  himself.  It 
is  characteristic  that  on  embarking  as  a  subaltern  for 
Egypt  he  wrote  enthusiastically : 

I  do  not  suppose  that  any  expedition  since  the  days 
of  Roman  governors  of  provinces  has  started  with 
such  magnificence;  we  might  have  been  Antony 
going  to  Egypt  in  a  purple-sailed  galley. 

This  is  precisely  the  spirit  which  animates  his 
appreciation  of  the  Elizabethans  and  of  Walter  Scott ; 
which  guides  him  toward  Hakluyt  and  North. 
Wyndham  was  enthusiastic,  he  was  a  Romantic,  he 
was  an  Imperialist,  and  he  was  quite  naturally  a 
literary  pupil  of  W.  E.  Henley.  Wyndham  was  a 
scholar,  but  his  scholarship  is  incidental;  he  was  a 
good  critic,  within  the  range  allowed  him  by  his 
enthusiasms;  but  it  is  neither  as  Scholar  nor  as 
Critic  that  we  can  criticize  him.  We  can  criticize 
his  writings  only  as  the  expression  of  this  peculiar 
24 


Imperfect  Critics 

English  type,  the  aristocrat,  the  Imperialist,  the 
Romantic,  riding  to  hounds  across  his  prose,  looking 
with  wonder  upon  the  world  as  upon  a  fairyland. 

Because  he  belongs  to  this  type,  Wyndham  wrote 
enthusiastically  and  well  about  North's  Plutarch. 
The  romance  of  the  ancient  world  becomes  more 
romantic  in  the  idiomatic  prose  of  North ;  the  heroes 
are  not  merely  Greek  and  Roman  heroes,  but 
Elizabethan  heroes  as  well;  the  romantic  fusion 
allured  Wyndham.  The  charms  of  North  could  not 
be  expounded  more  delightfully,  more  seductively, 
with  more  gusto,  than  they  are  in  Wyndham's  essay. 
He  appreciates  the  battles,  the  torchlight,  the  "  dead 
sound"  of  drums,  the  white,  worn  face  of  Cicero  in 
his  flight  peering  from  his  litter ;  he  appreciates  the 
sharp  brusque  phrase  of  North  :  "  he  roundly  trussed 
them  up  and  hung  them  by  their  necks."  And 
Wyndham  is  learned.  Here,  as  in  his  essays  on  the 
Ple*iade  and  Shakespeare,  the  man  has  read  every- 
thing, with  a  labour  that  only  whets  his  enjoyment  of 
the  best.  There  are  two  [defects :  a  lack  of  balance 
and  a  lack  of  critical  profundity.  The  lack  of  balance 
peeps  through  Wyndham's  condemnation  of  an 
obviously  inferior  translation  of  Plutarch:  "He 
dedicated  the  superfluity  of  his  leisure  to  enjoyment, 
and  used  his  Lamia,"  says  the  bad  translator.  North : 
"he  took  pleasure  of  Lamia."  Wyndham  makes  a 
set  upon  the  bad  translator.  But  he  forgets  that 
"dedicated  the  superfluity  of  his  leisure"  is  such  a 
phrase  as  Gibbon  would  have  warmed  to  life  and  wit, 
and  that  a  history,  in  the  modern  sense,  could  not  be 
written  in  the  style  of  North.  Wyndham  forgets,  in 
short,  that  it  is  not,  in  the  end,  periods  and  traditions 
25 


The  Sacred  Wood 

but   individual    men    who   write  great    prose.     For 
Wyndham  is  himself  a  period  and  a  tradition. 

The  lack  of  balance  is  to  be  suspected  elsewhere. 
Wyndham  likes  the  best,  but  he  likes  a  good  deal. 
There  is  no  conclusive  evidence  that  he  realized  all  the 
difference,  the  gulf  of  difference  between  lines  like : 

En  1'an  trentiesme  de  mon  aage 
Que  toutes  mes  hontes  j'ay  beues ; 

and  even  the  very  best  of  Ronsard  or  Bellay,  such  as  : 

Le  temps  s'en  va,  le  temps  s'en  va,  madame ; 
Las  !  le  temps,  non,  mais  nous  nous  en  aliens 
Et  tost  serons  estendus  sous  la  lame. 

We  should  not  gather  from  Wyndham's  essay  that  the 
Phoenix  and  Turtle  is  a  great  poem,  far  finer  than 
Venus  and  Adonis ;  but  what  he  says  about 
Venus  and  Adonis  is  worth  reading,  for  Wyndham 
is  very  sharp  in  perceiving  the  neglected  beauties  of 
the  second-rate.  There  is  nothing  to  show  the  gulf 
of  difference  between  Shakespeare's  sonnets  and 
those  of  any  other  Elizabethan.  Wyndham  overrates 
Sidney,  and  in  his  references  to  Elizabethan  writings 
on  the  theory  of  poetry  omits  mention  of  the  essay 
by  Campion,  an  abler  and  more  daring  though  less 
common-sense  study  than  Daniel's.  He  speaks  a 
few  words  for  Drayton,  but  has  not  noticed  that  the 
only  good  lines  (with  the  exception  of  one  sonnet 
which  may  be  an  accident)  in  Drayton's  dreary 
sequence  of  "  Ideas  "  occur  when  Drayton  drops  his 
costume  for  a  moment  and  talks  in  terms  of  actuality  : 

Lastly,  mine  eyes  amazedly  have  seen 
Essex'  great  fall ;  Tyrone  his  peace  to  gain ; 
The  quiet  end  of  that  long-living  queen ; 
The  king's  fair  entry,  and  our  peace  with  Spain. 
26 


Imperfect  Critics 

More  important  than  the  lack  of  balance  is  the 
lack  of  critical  analysis.  Wyndham  had,  as  was 
indicated,  a  gusto  for  the  Elizabethans.  His  essay 
on  the  Poems  of  Shakespeare  contains  an  extra- 
ordinary amount  of  information.  There  is  some 
interesting  gossip  about  Mary  Fitton  and  a  good 
anecdote  of  Sir  William  Knollys.  But  Wyndham 
misses  what  is  the  cardinal  point  in  criticizing  the 
Elizabethans:  we  cannot  grasp  them,  understand 
them,  without  some  understanding  of  the  pathology 
of  rhetoric.  Rhetoric,  a  particular  form  of  rhetoric, 
was  endemic,  it  pervaded  the  whole  organism ;  the 
healthy  as  well  as  the  morbid  tissues  were  built  up  on 
it.  We  cannot  grapple  with  even  the  simplest  and 
most  conversational  lines  in  Tudor  and  early  Stuart 
drama  without  having  diagnosed  the  rhetoric  in  the 
sixteenth  and  seventeenth-century  mind.  Even 
when  we  come  across  lines  like : 

There's  a  plumber  laying  pipes  in  my  guts,  it  scalds, 

we  must  not  allow  ourselves  to  forget  the  rhetorical 
basis  any  more  than  when  we  read : 

Come,  let  us  march  against  the  powers  of  heaven 
And  set  black  streamers  in  the  firmament 
To  signify  the  slaughter  of  the  gods. 

An  understanding  of  Elizabethan  rhetoric  is  as 
essential  to  the  appreciation  of  Elizabethan  literature 
as  an  understanding  of  Victorian  sentiment  is 
essential  to  the  appreciation  of  Victorian  literature 
and  of  George  Wyndham. 

Wyndham  was   a   Romantic ;    the  only   cure   for 
Romanticism  is  to  analyse  it.     What  is   permanent 
and  good  in  Romanticism  is  curiosity — 
27 


The  Sacred  Wood 

...  1'  ardore 

ChJ  i*  ebbe  a  divenir  del  mondo  esperto 
E  degli  vizii  umani  e  del  valore — 

a  curiosity  which  recognizes  that  any  life,  if  accurately 
and  profoundly  penetrated,  is  interesting  and  always 
strange.  Romanticism  is  a  short  cut  to  the  strange- 
ness without  the  reality,  and  it  leads  its  disciples 
only  back  upon  themselves.  George  Wyndham  had 
curiosity,  but  he  employed  it  romantically,  not  to 
penetrate  the  real  world,  but  to  complete  the  varied 
features  of  the  world  he  made  for  himself.  It  would 
be  of  interest  to  divagate  from  literature  to  politics 
and  inquire  to  what  extent  Romanticism  is  incorporate 
in  Imperialism ;  to  inquire  to  what  extent  Romanticism 
has  possessed  the  imagination  of  Imperialists,  and  to 
what  extent  it  was  made  use  of  by  Disraeli.  But 
this  is  quite  another  matter :  there  may  be  a  good 
deal  to  be  said  for  Romanticism  in  life,  there  is  no 
place  for  it  in  letters.  Not  that  we  need  conclude 
that  a  man  of  George  Wyndham's  antecedents  and 
traditions  must  inevitably  be  a  Romanticist  writer. 
But  this  is  the  case  when  such  a  man  plants  himself 
firmly  in  his  awareness  of  caste,  when  he  says  "  The 
gentry  must  not  abdicate."  In  politics  this  may  be 
an  admirable  formula.  It  will  not  do  in  literature. 
The  Arts  insist  that  a  man  shall  dispose  of  all  that 
he  has,  even  of  his  family  tree,  and  follow  art  alone. 
For  they  require  that  a  man  be  not  a  member  of  a 
family  or  of  a  caste  or  of  a  party  or  of  a  coterie,  but 
simply  and  solely  himself.  A  man  like  Wyndham 
brings  several  virtues  into  literature.  But  there  is 
only  one  man  better  and  more  uncommon  than  the 
patrician,  and  that  is  the  Individual. 
28 


Imperfect  Critics 

THE  LOCAL  FLAVOUR 

In  a  world  which  is  chiefly  occupied  with  the  task 
of  keeping  up  to  date  with  itself,  it  is  a  satisfaction 
to  know  that  there  is  at  least  one  man  who  has  not 
only  read  but  enjoyed,  and  not  only  enjoyed  but  read, 
such  authors  as  Petronius  and  Herondas.  That  is 
Mr.  Charles  Whibley,  and  there  are  two  statements 
to  make  about  him :  that  he  is  not  a  critic,  and  that 
he  is  something  which  is  almost  as  rare,  if  not  quite 
as  precious.  He  has  apparently  read  and  enjoyed 
a  great  deal  of  English  literature,  and  the  part  of  it 
that  he  has  most  enjoyed  is  the  literature  of  the  great 
ages,  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries.  We 
may  opine  that  Mr.  Whibley  has  not  uttered  a  single 
important  original  judgment  upon  any  of  this  literature. 
On  the  other  hand,  how  many  have  done  so  ?  Mr. 
Whibley  is  not  a  critic  of  men  or  of  books ;  but  he 
convinces  us  that  if  we  read  the  books  that  he  has 
read  we  should  find  them  as  delightful  as  he  has 
found  them ;  and  if  we  read  them  we  can  form  our 
own  opinions.  And  if  he  has  not  the  balance  of  the 
critic,  he  has  some  other  equipoise  of  his  own.  It  is 
partly  that  his  tastes  are  not  puritanical,  that  he  can 
talk  about  Restoration  dramatists  and  others -without 
apologizing  for  their  "indecency";  it  is  partly  his 
sense  for  the  best  local  and  temporal  flavours ;  it  is 
partly  his  healthy  appetite. 

A  combination  of  non-critical,  rather  than  uncritical, 
qualities  made  Mr.  Whibley  the  most  appropriate 
person  in  the  world  for  the  work  by  which  he  is  best 
known.  We  should  be  more  grateful  for  the  "  Tudor 
Translations  Series "  if  we  could  find  copies  to  be 
29 


The  Sacred  Wood 

bought,  and  if  we  could  afford  to  buy  them  when  we 
found  them.     But  that  is  not   Mr.  Whibley's  fault. 
The  introductions  which  he  wrote  for  some  of  the 
translators  are  all  that  such  introductions  should  be. 
His  Urquhart's  Rabelais  contains  all  the  irrelevant 
information  about  that  writer  which  is  what  is  wanted 
to  stimulate  a  taste  for  him.     After  reading  the  intro- 
duction, to  read  Urquhart  was  the  only  pleasure  in 
life.     And  therefore,  in  a  country  destitute  of  living 
criticism,  Mr.  Whibley  is  a  useful  person:   for   the 
first  thing  is  that  English  literature  should  be  read 
at  all.     The  few  people  who  talk  intelligently  about 
Stendhal  and  Flaubert  and  James  know  this ;  but  the 
larger  number  of  people  who  skim  the  conversation 
of  the  former  do  not  know  enough  of  English  literature 
to  be  even  insular.     There  are  two  ways  in  which 
a  writer  may  lead  us  to  profit  by  the  work  of  dead 
writers.     One  is  by  isolating  the  essential,  by  point- 
ing out   the   most    intense    in  various    kinds    and 
separating  it   from   the   accidents    of  environment. 
This  method  is  helpful  only  to  the  more  intelligent 
people,  who  are  capable  of  a  unique  enjoyment  of 
perfect  expression,  and  it  concentrates  on  the  very  best 
in  any  art.     The  other  method,  that  of  Mr.  Whibley, 
is  to  communicate  a  taste  for  the  period — and  for  the 
best  of  the  oeriod  so  far  as  it  is  of  that  period.     That 
is  not  very  easy  either.     For  a  pure  journalist  will  not 
know  any  period  well  enough ;  a  pure  dilettante  will 
know  it   too  egotistically,  as  a  fashion  of  his  own. 
Mr.    Whibley    is    really    interested;    and    he    has 
escaped,   without  any   programme    of   revolt,   from 
the    present    century    into    those    of    Tudor    and 
Stuart.      He    escapes,    and    perhaps    leads    others, 
30 


Imperfect  Critics 

by  virtue  of  a  taste  which  is  not  exactly  a  literary 
taste. 

The  "Tudor  Translations"  form  part  of  a  pro- 
nounced taste.  Some  are  better  written  than  others. 
There  is,  of  course,  a  world  of  difference — of  which 
Mr.  Whibley  is  perhaps  unaware — between  even  Florio 
and  his  original.  The  French  of  Montaigne  is  a 
mature  language,  and  the  English  of  Florio's  living 
translation  is  not.  Montaigne  could  be  translated 
into  the  English  of  his  time,  but  a  similar  work  could 
not  have  been  written  in  it.  But  as  the  English 
language  matured  it  lost  something  that  Florio  and 
all  his  inferior  colleagues  had,  and  that  they  had  in 
common  with  the  language  of  Montaigne.  It  was  not 
only  the  language,  but  the  time.  The  prose  of  that 
age  had  life,  a  life  to  which  later  ages  could  not  add, 
from  which  they  could  only  take  away.  You  find  the 
same  life,  the  same  abundance,  in  Montaigne  and 
Brantome,  the  alteration  in  Rochefoucauld  as  in 
Hobbes,  the  desiccation  in  the  classic  prose  of  both 
languages,  in  Voltaire  and  in  Gibbon.  Only,  the 
French  was  originally  richer  and  more  mature — already 
in  Joinville  and  Commines — and  we  have  no  prose 
to  compare  with  Montaigne  and  Rabelais.  If  Mr. 
Whibley  had  analysed  this  vitality,  and  told  us  why 
Holland  and  Underdowne,  Nashe  and  Martin 
Marprelate  are  still  worth  reading,  then  he  could  have 
shown  us  how  to  recognize  this  quality  when  it,  or 
something  like  it,  appears  in  our  own  lifetime.  But 
Mr.  Whibley  is  not  an  analyst.  His  taste,  even, 
becomes  less  certain  as  he  fixes  it  on  individuals 
within  his  period.  On  Surrey's  blank  verse  he  is 
feeble;  he  does  not  even  give  Surrey  the  credit  of 
31 


The  Sacred  Wood 

having  anticipated  some  of  Tennyson's  best  effects. 
He  has  no  praise  for  Golding,  quite  one  of  the  best  of 
the  verse  translators ;  he  apologizes  for  him  by  saying 
that  Ovid  demands  no  strength  or  energy !  There  is 
strength  and  energy,  at  least,  in  Marlowe's  Amores. 
And  he  omits  mention  of  Gawain  Douglas,  who, 
though  he  wrote  in  Scots,  was  surely  a  "Tudor" 
translator.  Characteristically,  Mr.  Whibley  praises 
Chapman  because 

it  gives  proof  of  an  abounding  life,  a  quenchless 
energy.  There  is  a  grandeur  and  spirit  in  Chapman's 
rendering,  not  unworthy  the  original  .  .  . 

This  is  commonplace,  and  it  is  uncritical.  And  a 
critic  would  not  use  so  careless  a  phrase  as  "  Tasso's 
masterpiece."  The  essay  on  Congreve  does  not  add 
much  to  our  understanding : 

And  so  he  set  upon  the  boards  a  set  of  men  and 
women  of  quick  brains  and  cynical  humours,  who 
talked  with  the  brilliance  and  rapidity  wherewith  the 
finished  swordsman  fences. 

We  have  heard  of  this  conversation  like  fencing  before. 
And  the  suspicion  is  in  our  breast  that  Mr.  Whibley 
might  admire  George  Meredith.  The  essay  on 
Ralegh  gives  still  less.  The  reality  of  that  pleasing 
pirate  and  monopolist  has  escaped,  and  only  the 
national  hero  is  left.  And  yet  Ralegh,  and  Swift,  and 
Congreve,  and  the  underworld  of  sixteenth  and 
seventeenth-century  letters,  are  somehow  kept  alive 
by  what  Mr.  Whibley  says  of  them. 

Accordingly,  Mr.  Whibley  does  not  disappear  in  the 
jungle  of  journalism  and  false  criticism ;  he  deserves 
a  "place  upon  the  shelves"  of  those  who  care  for 
32 


Imperfect  Critics 

English  literature.  He  has  the  first  requisite  of  a 
critic:  interest  in  his  subject,  and  ability  to  com- 
municate an  interest  in  it.  His  defects  are  both  of 
intellect  and  feeling.  He  has  no  dissociative  faculty. 
There  were  very  definite  vices  and  definite  short- 
comings and  immaturities  in  the  literature  he  admires ; 
and  as  he  is  not  the  person  to  tell  us  of  the  vices  and 
shortcomings,  he  is  not  the  person  to  lay  before  us 
the  work  of  absolutely  the  finest  quality.  He  exercises 
neither  of  the  tools  of  the  critic :  comparison  and 
analysis.  He  has  not  the  austerity  of  passion  which 
can  detect  unerringly  the  transition  from  work  of 
eternal  intensity  to  work  that  is  merely  beautiful,  and 
from  work  that  is  beautiful  to  work  that  is  merely 
charming.  For  the  critic  needs  to  be  able  not  only 
to  saturate  himself  in  the  spirit  and  the  fashion  of  a 
time — the  local  flavour — but  also  to  separate  himself 
suddenly  from  it  in  appreciation  of  the  highest  creative 
work. 

And  he  needs  something  else  that  Mr.  Whibley 
lacks  :  a  creative  interest,  a  focus  upon  the  immediate 
future.  The  important  critic  is  the  person  who  is 
absorbed  in  the  present  problems  of  art,  and  who 
wishes  to  bring  the  forces  of  the  past  to  bear  upon 
the  solution  of  these  problems.  If  the  critic  consider 
Congreve,  for  instance,  he  will  have  always  at  the 
back  of  his  mind  the  question :  What  has  Congreve 
got  that  is  pertinent  to  our  dramatic  art  ?  Even  if  he 
is  solely  engaged  in  trying  to  understand  Congreve, 
this  will  make  all  the  difference:  inasmuch  as  to 
understand  anything  is  to  understand  from  a  point  of 
view.  Most  critics  have  some  creative  interest — it 
may  be,  instead  of  an  interest  in  any  art,  an  interest 
c  33 


The  Sacred  Wood 

(like  Mr.  Paul  More's)  in  morals.  These  remarks 
were  introduced  only  to  assist  in  giving  the  books  of 
Mr.  Whibley  a  place,  a  particular  but  unticketed  place, 
neither  with  criticism,  nor  with  history,  nor  with  plain 
journalism;  and  the  trouble  would  not  have  been 
taken  if  the  books  were  not  thought  to  be  worth 
placing. 

A  NOTE  ON  THE  AMERICAN  CRITIC 

This  gallery  of  critics  is  not  intended  to  be  in  any 
sense  complete.  But  having  dealt  with  three  English 
writers  of  what  may  be  called  critical  prose,  one's 
mind  becomes  conscious  of  the  fact  that  they  have 
something  in  common,  and,  trying  to  perceive  more 
clearly  what  this  community  is,  and  suspecting  that 
it  is  a  national  quality,  one  is  impelled  to  meditate 
upon  the  strongest  contrast  possible.  Hence  these 
comments  upon  two  American  critics  and  one  French 
critic,  which  would  not  take  exactly  this  form  without 
the  contrast  at  which  I  have  hinted. 

Mr.  Paul  More  is  the  author  of  a  number  of  volumes 
which  he  perhaps  hopes  will  break  the  record  of  mass 
established  by  the  complete  works  of  Sainte-Beuve. 
The  comparison  with  Sainte-Beuve  is  by  no  means 
trivial,  for  Mr.  More,  and  Professor  Irving  Babbitt 
also,  are  admirers  of  the  voluminous  Frenchman. 
Not  only  are  they  admirers,  but  their  admiration  is 
perhaps  a  clue  both  to  much  of  their  merit  and  to 
some  of  their  defects.  In  the  first  place,  both  of  these 
writers  have  given  much  more  attention  to  French 
criticism,  to  the  study  of  French  standards  of  writing 
and  of  thought,  than  any  of  the  notable  English  critics 

34 


Imperfect  Critics 

since  Arnold ;  they  are  therefore  much  nearer  to  the 
European  current,  although  they  exhibit  faults  which 
are  definitely  transatlantic  and  which  definitely  keep 
them  out  of  it.     The  French  influence  is  traceable  in 
their  devotion  to  ideas  and  their  interest  in  problems 
of  art  and  life  as  problems  which  exist  and  can  be 
handled  apart  from  their  relations  to  the  critic's  private 
temperament.      With    Swinburne,    the    criticism    of 
Elizabethan  literature  has  the  interest  of  a  passion,  it 
has  the  interest  for  us  of  any  writing  by  an  intellectual 
man    who   is    genuinely   moved    by   certain    poetry. 
Swinburne's  intelligence  is  not  defective,  it  is  impure. 
There  are  few  ideas  in  Swinburne's  critical  writings 
which  stand  forth  luminous  with  an  independent  life 
of  their  own,  so  true  that  one  forgets  the  author  in 
the  statement.     Swinburne's   words  must  always  be 
referred  back  to  Swinburne  himself.     And  if  literature 
is  to  Swinburne  merely  a  passion,  we  are  tempted  to 
say  that  to  George  Wyndham  it  was  a  hobby,  and  to 
Mr.  Whibley  almost  a  charming  showman's  show  (we 
are  charmed  by  the  urbanity  of  the  showman).     The 
two  latter  have  gusto,  but  gusto  is  no  equivalent  for 
taste ;  it  depends  too  much  upon  the  appetite  and  the 
digestion  of  the  feeder.     And  with  one  or  two  other 
writers,  whom  I  have  not  had  occasion  to  discuss, 
literature  is   not  so   much   a   collection  of  valuable 
porcelain  as  an  institution — accepted,  that  is  to  say, 
with  the  same  gravity  as  the  establishments  of  Church 
and  State.     That  is,  in  other  words,  the  essentially 
uncritical   attitude.      In   all   of   these   attitudes    the 
English  critic  is  the  victim  of  his  temperament.     He 
may   acquire   great    erudition,    but   erudition   easily 
becomes  a  hobby ;  it  is  useless  unless  it  enables  us  to 
35 


The  Sacred  Wood 

see  literature  all  round,  to  detach  it  from  ourselves,  to 
reach  a  state  of  pure  contemplation. 

Now  Mr.  More  and  Mr.  Babbitt  have  endeavoured 
to  establish  a  criticism  which  should  be  independent 
of  temperament.  This  is  in  itself  a  considerable 
merit.  But  at  this  point  Mr.  More  particularly  has 
been  led  astray,  oddly  enough,  by  his  guide  Sainte- 
Beuve.  Neither  Mr.  More  nor  Sainte-Beuve  is 
primarily  interested  in  art.  Of  the  latter  M.  Benda 
has  well  observed  that 

on  sait — et  c'est  certainement  un  des  grands  elements 
de  son  succes — combien  deludes  1'illustre  critique 
consacre  a  des  auteurs  dont  1'importance  litte'raire  est 
quasi  nulle  (femmes,  magistrals,  courtisans,  militaires), 
mais  dont  les  Merits  lui  sont  une  occasion  de  pour- 
traiturer  une  ame;  combien  volontiers,  pour  les 
maitres,  il  s'attache  a  leurs  productions  secondaires, 
notes,  brouillons,  lettres  intimes,  plutot  qu'a  leurs 
grandes  ceuvres,  souvent  beaucoup  moins  expressives, 
en  effet,  de  leur  psychologie. 

Mr.  More  is  not,  like  Sainte-Beuve,  primarily  interested 
in  psychology  or  in  human  beings;  Mr.  More  is 
primarily  a  moralist,  which  is  a  worthy  and  serious 
thing  to  be.  The  trouble  with  Mr.  More  is  that  you 
cannot  disperse  a  theory  or  point  of  view  of  morals 
over  a  vast  number  of  essays  on  a  great  variety  of 
important  figures  in  literature,  unless  you  can  give 
some  more  particular  interest  as  well.  Sainte-Beuve 
has  his  particularized  interest  in  human  beings; 
another  critic — say  Remy  de  Gourmont — may  have 
something  to  say  always  about  the  art  of  a  writer  which 
will  make  our  enjoyment  of  that  writer  more  conscious 
and  more  intelligent.  But  the  pure  moralist  in 

36 


Imperfect  Critics 

letters— the  moralist  is  useful  to  the  creator  as  well  as 
the  reader  of  poetry — must  be  more  concise,  for  we 
must  have  the  pleasure  of  inspecting  the  beauty  of  his 
structure.  And  here  M.  Julien  Benda  has  a  great 
advantage  over  Mr.  More ;  his  thought  may  be  less 
profound,  but  it  has  more  formal  beauty. 

Mr.  Irving  Babbitt,  who  shares  so  many  of  the 
ideals  and  opinions  of  Mr.  More  that  their  names 
must  be  coupled,  has  expressed  his  thought  more 
abstractly  and  with  more  form,  and  is  free  from  a 
mystical  impulse  which  occasionally  gets  out  of  Mr. 
More's  hand.  He  appears,  more  clearly  than  Mr. 
More,  and  certainly  more  clearly  than  any  critic  of 
equal  authority  in  America  or  England,  to  perceive 
Europe  as  a  whole;  he  has  the  cosmopolitan 
mind  and  a  tendency  to  seek  the  centre.  His  few 
books  are  important,  and  would  be  more  important  if 
he  preached  of  discipline  in  a  more  disciplined  style. 
Although  he  also  is  an  admirer  of  Sainte-Beuve,  he 
would  probably  subscribe  to  this  admirable  paragraph 
of  Othenin  d'Haussonville : l 

II  y  a  une  beautd  litte'raire,  impersonnelle  en  quelque 
sorte,  parfaitement  distincte  de  1'auteur  lui-meme  et 
de  son  organisation,  beaut£  qui  a  sa  raison  d'etre  et 
ses  lois,  dont  la  critique  est  tenue  de  rendre  compte. 
Et  si  la  critique  considere  cette  tache  comme 
au-dessous  d'elle,  si  c'est  affaire  a  la  rhe*torique  et  a 
ce  que  Sainte-Beuve  appelle  de"daigneusement  les 
Quintilien,  alors  la  rhetorique  a  du  bon  et  les 
Quintilien  ne  sont  pas  a  dedaigner. 

There  may  be  several  critics  in  England  who  would 

1  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes^  fevr.  1875,  quoted  by  Benda, 
Belphc'gor,  p.  140. 

37 


The  Sacred  Wood 

applaud  this  notion;  there  are  very  few  who  show 
any  evidence  of  its  apprehension  in  their  writings. 
But  Mr.  More  and  Mr.  Babbitt,  whatever  their  actual 
tastes,  and  although  they  are  not  primarily  occupied 
with  art,  are  on  the  side  of  the  artist.  And  the  side 
of  the  artist  is  not  the  side  which  in  England  is  often 
associated  with  critical  writing.  As  Mr.  More  has 
pointed  out  in  an  interesting  essay,  there  is  a  vital 
weakness  in  Arnold's  definition  of  criticism  as  "the 
disinterested  endeavour  to  know  the  best  that  is 
known  and  thought  in  the  world,  irrespectively  of 
practice,  politics,  and  everything  of  the  kind."  The 
"disinterested  endeavour  to  know"  is  only  a  pre- 
requisite of  the  critic,  and  is  not  criticism^  which  may 
be  the  result  of  such  an  endeavour.  Arnold  states 
the  work  of  the  critic  merely  in  terms  of  the  personal 
ideal,  an  ideal  for  oneself — and  an  ideal  for  oneself  is 
not  disinterested.  Here  Arnold  is  the  Briton  rather 
than  the  European. 

Mr.  More  indicates  his  own  attitude  in  praising 
those  whom  he  elevates  to  the  position  of  masters  of 
criticism  : 

If  they  deal  much  with  the  criticism  of  literature, 
this  is  because  in  literature  more  manifestly  than 
anywhere  else  life  displays  its  infinitely  varied  motives 
and  results;  and  their  practice  is  always  to  render 
literature  itself  more  consciously  a  criticism  of  life. 

"Criticism  of  life"  is  a  facile  phrase,  and  at  most 
only  represents  one  aspect  of  great  literature,  if  it 
does  not  assign  to  the  term  "criticism"  itself  a 
generality  which  robs  it  of  precision.  Mr.  More  has, 
it  seems  to  me,  in  this  sentence  just  failed  to  put  his 

38 


Imperfect  Critics 

finger  on  the  right  seriousness  of  great  literary  art: 
the  seriousness  which  we  find  in  Villon's  Testament 
and  which  is  conspicuously  absent  from  In 
Memoriam'y  or  the  seriousness  which  controls 
Amos  Barton  and  not  The  Mill  on  the  Floss. 

It  is  a  pity  that  Mr.  More  does  not  write  a  little 
oftener  about  the  great  literary  artists,  it  is  a  pity  that 
he  takes  the  reputations  of  the  world  too  solemnly. 
This  is  probably  due  in  part  to  remoteness  in  space 
from  the  European  centre.  But  it  must  be  observed 
that  English  solemnity  and  American  solemnity  are 
very  different.  I  do  not  propose  to  analyse  the 
difference  (it  would  be  a  valuable  chapter  in  social 
history);  the  American  solemnity,  it  is  enough  to 
say,  is  more  primitive,  more  academic,  more  like 
that  of  the  German  professor.  But  it  is  not  the 
fault  of  Mr.  More  or  Mr.  Babbitt  that  the  culture  of 
ideas  has  only  been  able  to  survive  in  America  in  the 
unfavourable  atmosphere  of  the  university. 

THE  FRENCH  INTELLIGENCE 

As  the  inspection  of  types  of  English  irresistibly 
provoked  a  glance  at  two  American  critics,  so  the 
inspection  of  the  latter  leads  our  attention  to  the 
French.  M.  Julien  Benda  has  the  formal  beauty 
which  the  American  critics  lack,  and  a  close  affinity 
to  them  in  point  of  view.  He  restricts  himself, 
perhaps,  to  a  narrower  field  of  ideas,  but  within  that 
field  he  manipulates  the  ideas  with  a  very  exceptional 
cogency  and  clarity.  To  notice  his  last  book  (Belphegor : 
essai  sur  Vesthetique  de  la  presente  societe  franfaise) 
would  be  to  quote  from  it.  M.  Benda  is  not  like 

39 


The  Sacred  Wood 

Remy  de  Gourmont,  the  critical  consciousness  of  a 
generation,  he  could  not  supply  the  conscious  formulas 
of  a  sensibility  in  process  of  formation ;  he  is  rather 
the  ideal  scavenger  of  the  rubbish  of  our  time. 
Much  of  his  analysis  of  the  decadence  of  contemporary 
French  society  could  be  applied  to  London,  although 
differences  are  observable  from  his  diagnosis. 

Quant  a  la  socie"t£  en  elle-meme,  on  peut  pre*voir 
que  ce  soin  qu'elle  met  a  e*prouver  de  I'e'moi  par  1'art, 
devenant  cause  a  son  tour,  y  rendra  la  soif  de  ce 
plaisir  de  plus  en  plus  intense,  1'application  a  la 
satisfaire  de  plus  en  plus  jalouseet  plus  perfectionnee. 
On  entrevoit  le  jour  ou  la  bonne  socie"t£  franQaise 
repudiera  encore  le  peu  qu'elle  supporte  aujourd'hui 
d'ide*es  et  d'organisation  dans  1'art,  et  ne  se  passionera 
plus  que  pour  des  gestes  de  come'diens,  pour  des 
impressions  de  femmes  ou  d'enfants,  pour  des 
rugissements  de  lyriques,  pour  des  extases  de 
fanatiques  .  .  . 

Almost  the  only  person  who  has  ever  figured  in 
England  and  attempted  a  task  at  all  similar  to  that  of 
M.  Benda  is  Matthew  Arnold.  Matthew  Arnold  was 
intelligent,  and  by  so  much  difference  as  the  presence 
of  one  intelligent  man  makes,  our  age  is  inferior  to 
that  of  Arnold.  But  what  an  advantage  a  man  like 
M.  Benda  has  over  Arnold.  It  is  not  simply  that  he 
has  a  critical  tradition  behind  him,  and  that  Arnold 
is  using  a  language  which  constantly  tempts  the  user 
away  from  dispassionate  exposition  into  sarcasm  and 
diatribe,  a  language  less  fitted  for  criticism  than  the 
English  of  the  eighteenth  century.  It  is  that  the 
follies  and  stupidities  of  the  French,  no  matter  how 
base,  express  themselves  in  the  form  of  ideas — 
Bergsonism  itself  is  an  intellectual  construction,  and 
40 


Imperfect  Critics 

the  mondaines  who  attended  lectures  at  the  College 
de  France  were  in  a  sense  using  their  minds.  A 
man  of  ideas  needs  ideas,  or  pseudo-ideas,  to  fight 
against.  And  Arnold  lacked  the  active  resistance 
which  is  necessary  to  keep  a  mind  at  its  sharpest. 
A  society  in  which  a  mind  like  M.  Benda's  can 
exercise  itself,  and  in  which  there  are  persdns  like  M. 
Benda,  is  one  which  facilitates  the  task  of  the  creative 
artist.  M.  Benda  cannot  be  attached,  like  Gourmont, 
to  any  creative  group.  He  does  not  wholly  partake 
in  that  "  conscious  creation  of  the  field  of  the  present 
out  of  the  past"  which  Mr.  More  considers  to  be 
part  of  the  work  of  the  critic.  But  in  analysing  the 
maladies  of  the  second-rate  or  corrupt  literature  of  the 
time  he  makes  the  labour  of  the  creative  artist  lighter. 
The  Charles  Louis  Philippes  of  English  literature  are 
never  done  with,  because  there  is  no  one  to  kill  their 
reputations ;  we  still  hear  that  George  Meredith  is  a 
master  of  prose,  or  even  a  profound  philosopher. 
The  creative  artist  in  England  finds  himself  compelled, 
or  at  least  tempted,  to  spend  much  of  his  time  and 
energy  in  criticism  that  he  might  reserve  for  the 
perfecting  of  his  proper  work :  simply  because  there 
is  no  one  else  to  do  it. 


Tradition  and  the  Individual  Talent  ^> 

I 

IN  English  writing  we  seldom  speak  of  tradition, 
though  we  occasionally  apply  its  name  in  deplor- 
ing its  absence.  We  cannot  refer  to  "  the  tradition  " 
or  to  "a  tradition";  at  most,  we  employ  the  ad- 
jective in  saying  that  the  poetry  of  So-and-so  is 
"  traditional  "  or  even  "  too  traditional."  Seldom, 
perhaps,  does  the  word  appear  except  in  a  phrase  of 
censure.  If  otherwise,  it  is  vaguely  approbative,  with 
the  implication,  as  to  the  work  approved,  of  some 
pleasing  archaeological  reconstruction.  You  can 
hardly  make  the  word  agreeable  to  English  ears 
without  this  comfortable  reference  to  the  reassuring 
science  of  archaeology. 

Certainly  the  word  is  not  likely  to  appear  in  our 
appreciations  of  living  or  dead  writers.  Every  nation, 
every  race,  has  not  only  its  own  creative,  but  its  own 
critical  turn  of  mind ;  and  is  even  more  oblivious  of 
the  shortcomings  and  limitations  of  its  critical  habits 
than  of  those  of  its  creative  genius.  We  know,  or 
think  we  know,  from  the  enormous  mass  of  critical 
writing  that  has  appeared  in  the  French  language  the 
critical  method  or  habit  of  the  French ;  we  only  con- 
clude (we  are  such  unconscious  people)  that  the 
French  are  "  more  critical "  than  we,  and  sometimes 
42 


Tradition  and  the  Individual  Talent 

even  plume  ourselves  a  little  with  the  fact,  as  if  the 
French  were  the  less  spontaneous.  Perhaps  they  are ; 
but  we  might  remind  ourselves  that  criticism  is  as 
inevitable  as  breathing,  and  that  we  should  be  none 
the  worse  for  articulating  what  passes  in  our  minds 
when  we  read  a  book  and  feel  an  emotion  about  it, 
for  criticizing  our  own  minds  in  their  work  of  criticism. 
One  of  the  facts  that  might  come  to  light  in  this 
process  is  our  tendency  to  insist,  when  we  praise  a 
poet,  upon  those  aspects  of  his  work  in  which  he 
least  resembles  anyone  else.  In  these  aspects  or 
parts  of  his  work  we  pretend  to  find  what  is  indi- 
vidual, what  is  the  peculiar  essence  of  the  man. 
We  dwell  with  satisfaction  upon  the  poet's  difference 
from  his  predecessors,  especially  his  immediate  pre- 
decessors ;  we  endeavour  to  find  something  that  can 
be  isolated  in  order  to  be  enjoyed.  Whereas  if  we 
approach  a  poet  without  his  prejudice  we  shall  often 
find  that  not  only  the  best,  but  the  most  individual 
parts  of  his  work  may  be  those  in  which  the  dead 
poets,  his  ancestors,  assert  their  immortality  most 
vigorously.  And  I  do  not  mean  the  impressionable 
period  of  adolescence,  but  the  period  of  full  maturity. 
Yet  if  the  only  form  of  tradition,  of  handing  down, 
consisted  in  following  the  ways  of  the  immediate 
generation  before  us  in  a  blind  or  timid  adherence  to 
its  successes,  "tradition"  should  positively  be  dis- 
couraged. We  have  seen  many  such  simple  currents 
soon  lost  in  the  sand ;  and  novelty  is  better  than 
repetition.  Tradition  is  a  matter  of  much  wider 
significance.  It  cannot  be  inherited,  and  if  you  want 
it  you  must  obtain  it  by  great  labour.  It  involves,  in 
the  first  place,  the  historical  sense,  which  we  may 
43 


The  Sacred  Wood 

call  nearly  indispensable  to  anyone  who  would  con- 
tinue to  be  a  poet  beyond  his  twenty-fifth  year ;  and 
the  historical  sense  involves  a  perception,  not  only  of 
the  pastness  of  the  past,  but  of  its  presence  ;  the  his- 
torical sense  compels  a  man  to  write  not  merely  with 
his  own  generation  in  his  bones,  but  with  a  feeling 
that  the  whole  of  the  literature  of  Europe  from 
Homer  and  within  it  the  whole  of  the  literature  of 
his  own  country  has  a  simultaneous  existence  and 
composes  a  simultaneous  order.  This  historical  sense, 
which  is  a  sense  of  the  timeless  as  well  as  of  the 
temporal  and  of  the  timeless  and  of  the  temporal 
together,  is  what  makes  a  writer  traditional.  And  it 
is  at  the  same  time  what  makes  a  writer  most  acutely 
conscious  of  his  place  in  time,  of  his  contempo- 
raneity. 

No  poet,  no  artist  of  any  art,  has  his  complete 
meaning  alone.  His  significance,  his  appreciation  is 
the  appreciation  of  his  relation  to  the  dead  poets  and 
artists.  You  cannot  value  him  alone ;  you  must  set 
him,  for  contrast  and  comparison,  among  the  dead. 
I  mean  this  as  a  principle  of  aesthetic,  not  merely 
historical,  criticism.  The  necessity  that  he  shall  con- 
form, that  he  shall  cohere,  is  not  one-sided ;  what 
happens  when  a  new  work  of  art  is  created  is  some- 
thing that  happens  simultaneously  to  all  the  works 
of  art  which  preceded  it.  The  existing  monuments 
form  an  ideal  order  among  themselves,  which  is 
modified  by  the  introduction  of  the  new  (the  really 
new)  work  of  art  among  them.  The  existing  order  is 
complete  before  the  new  work  arrives;  for  order  to 
persist  after  the  supervention  of  novelty,  the  whole 
existing  order  must  be,  if  ever  so  slightly,  altered ; 
44 


Tradition  and  the  Individual  Talent 

and  so  the  relations,  proportions,  values  of  each  work 
of  art  toward  the  whole  are  readjusted;  and  this  is 
conformity  between  the  old  and  the  new.  Whoever 
has  approved  this  idea  of  order,  of  the  form  of 
European,  of  English  literature,  will  not  find  it  pre- 
posterous that  the  past  should  be  altered  by  the 
present  as  much  as  the  present  is  directed  by  the 
past.  And  the  poet  who  is  aware  of  this  will  be 
aware  of  great  difficulties  and  responsibilities. 

In  a  peculiar  sense  he  will  be  aware  also  that  he 
must  inevitably  be  judged  by  the  standards  of  the 
past.  I  say  judged,  not  amputated,  by  them;  not 
judged  to  be  as  good  as,  or  worse  or  better  than, 
the  dead;  and  certainly  not  judged  by  the  canons 
of  dead  critics.  It  is  a  judgment,  a  comparison,  in 
which  two  things  are  measured  by  each  other.  To 
conform  merely  would  be  for  the  new  work  not  really 
to  conform  at  all ;  it  would  not  be  new,  and  would 
therefore  not  be  a  work  of  art.  And  we  do  not  quite 
say  that  the  new  is  more  valuable  because  it  fits  in ; 
but  its  fitting  in  is  a  test  of  its  value — a  test,  it  is 
true,  which  can  only  be  slowly  and  cautiously  applied, 
for  we  are  none  of  us  infallible  judges  of  conformity. 
We  say :  it  appears  to  conform,  and  is  perhaps  indi- 
vidual, or  it  appears  individual,  and  may  conform ; 
but  we  are  hardly  likely  to  find  that  it  is  one  and  not 
the  other. 

To  proceed  to  a  more  intelligible  exposition  of  the 
relation  of  the  poet  to  the  past :  he  can  neither  take 
the  past  as  a  lump,  an  indiscriminate  bolus,  nor 
can  he  form  himself  wholly  on  one  or  two  private 
admirations,  nor  can  he  form  himself  wholly  upon 
one  preferred  period.  The  first  course  is  inadmissible, 
45 


The  Sacred  Wood 

the  second  is  an  important  experience  of  youth,  and 
the  third  is  a  pleasant  and  highly  desirable  supple- 
ment. The  poet  must  be  very  conscious  of  the  main 
current,  which  does  not  at  all  flow  invariably  through 
the  most  distinguished  reputations.  He  must  be 
quite  aware  of  the  obvious  fact  that  art  never  improves, 
but  that  the  material  of  art  is  never  quite  the  same. 
He  must  be  aware  that  the  mind  of  Europe — the 
mind  of  his  own  country — a  mind  which  he  learns 
in  time  to  be  much  more  important  than  his  own 
private  mind — is  a  mind  which  changes,  and  that 
this  change  is  a  development  which  abandons  nothing 
en  route,  which  does  not  superannuate  either  Shake- 
speare, or  Homer,  or  the  rock  drawing  of  the  Mag- 
dalenian  draughtsmen.  That  this  development, 
refinement  perhaps,  complication  certainly,  is  not, 
from  the  point  of  view  of  the  artist,  any  improvement. 
Perhaps  not  even  an  improvement  from  the  point  of 
view  of  the  psychologist  or  not  to  the  extent  which 
we  imagine  \  perhaps  only  in  the  end  based  upon  a 
complication  in  economics  and  machinery.  But  the 
difference  between  the  present  and  the  past  is  that  the 
conscious  present  is  an  awareness  of  the  past  in  a 
way  and  to  an  extent  which  the  past's  awareness  of 
itself  cannot  show. 

Some  one  said  :  "  The  dead  writers  are  remote  from 
us  because  we  know  so  much  more  than  they  did." 
Precisely,  and  they  are  that  which  we  know. 

I  am  alive  to  a  usual  objection  to  what  is  clearly 
part  of  my  programme  for  the  metier  of  poetry.  The 
objection  is  that  the  doctrine  requires  a  ridiculous 
amount  of  erudition  (pedantry),  a  claim  which  can  be 
rejected  by  appeal  to  the  lives  of  poets  in  any  pan- 


Tradition  and  the  Individual  Talent 

theon.  It  will  even  be  affirmed  that  much  learning 
deadens  or  perverts  poetic  sensibility.  While,  how- 
ever, we  persist  in  believing  that  a  poet  ought  to 
know  as  much  as  will  not  encroach  upon  his  necessary 
receptivity  and  necessary  laziness,  it  is  not  desirable 
to  confine  knowledge  to  whatever  can  be  put  into  a 
useful  shape  for  examinations,  drawing-rooms,  or  the 
still  more  pretentious  modes  of  publicity.  Some  can 
absorb  knowledge,  the  more  tardy  must  sweat  for  it. 
Shakespeare  acquired  more  essential  history  from  Plu- 
tarch than  most  men  could  from  the  whole  British 
Museum.  What  is  to  be  insisted  upon  is  that  the 
poet  must  develop  or  procure  the  consciousness  of 
the  past  and  that  he  should  continue  to  develop  this 
consciousness  throughout  his  career. 

What  happens  is  a  continual  surrender  of  himself 
as  he  is  at  the  moment  to  something  which  is  more 
valuable.  The  progress  of  an  artist  is  a  continual  self- 
sacrifice,  a  continual  extinction  of  personality. 

There  remains  to  define  this  process  of  deperson- 
alization  and  its  relation  to  the  sense  of  tradition.  It 
is  in  this  depersonalization  that  art  may  be  said  to 
approach  the  condition  of  science.  I  shall,  therefore, 
invite  you  to  consider,  as  a  suggestive  analogy,  the 
action  which  takes  place  when  a  bit  of  finely  filiated 
platinum  is  introduced  into  a  chamber  containing 
oxygen  and  sulphur  dioxide. 

II 

Honest    criticism    and    sensitive    appreciation    is 
directed  not  upon  the  poet  but  upon  the  poetry.     If 
we  attend  to  the  confused  cries  of  the  newspaper 
47 


The  Sacred  Wood 

critics  and  the  susurrus  of  popular  repetition  that 
follows,  we  shall  hear  the  names  of  poets  in  great 
numbers;  if  we  seek  not  Blue-book  knowledge  but 
the  enjoyment  of  poetry,  and  ask  for  a  poem,  we  shall 
seldom  find  it.  In  the  last  article  I  tried  to  point 
out  the  importance  of  the  relation  of  the  poem  to 
other  poems  by  other  authors,  and  suggested  the 
conception  of  poetry  as  a  living  whole  of  all  the 
poetry  that  has  ever  been  written.  The  other  aspect  of 
this  Impersonal  theory  of  poetry  is  the  relation  of  the 
poem  to  its  author.  And  I  hinted,  by  an  analogy,  that 
the  mind  of  the  mature  poet  differs  from  that  of  the 
immature  one  not  precisely  in  any  valuation  of 
"  personality,"  not  being  necessarily  more  interesting, 
or  having  "  more  to  say,"  but  rather  by  being  a  more 
finely  perfected  medium  in  which  special,  or  very 
varied,  feelings  are  at  liberty  to  enter  into  new  com- 
binations. 

The  analogy  was  that  of  the  catalyst.  When  the 
two  gases  previously  mentioned  are  mixed  in  the 
presence  of  a  filament  of  platinum,  they  form  sul- 
phurous acid.  This  combination  takes  place  only 
if  the  platinum  is  present;  nevertheless  the  newly 
formed  acid  contains  no  trace  of  platinum,  and  the 
platinum  itself  is  apparently  unaffected  ;  has  remained 
inert,  neutral,  and  unchanged.  The  mind  of  the  poet 
is  the  shred  of  platinum.  It  may  partly  or  exclusively 
operate  upon  the  experience  of  the  man  himself;  but, 
the  more  perfect  the  artist,  the  more  completely 
separate  in  him  will  be  the  man  who  suffers  and  the 
mind  which  creates ;  the  more  perfectly  will  the 
mind  digest  and  transmute  the  passions  which  are  its 
material. 

48 


Tradition  and  the  Individual  Talent 

The  experience,  you  will  notice,  the  elements 
which  enter  the  presence  of  the  transforming  catalyst, 
are  of  two  kinds  :  emotions  and  feelings.  The  effect 
of  a  work  of  art  upon  the  person  who  enjoys  it  is  an 
experience  different  in  kind  from  any  experience  not 
of  art.  It  may  be  formed  out  of  one  emotion,  or 
may  be  a  combination  of  several ;  and  various  feel- 
ings, inhering  for  the  writer  in  particular  words  or 
phrases  or  images,  may  be  added  to  compose  the 
final  result.  Or  great  poetry  may  be  made  without 
the  direct  use  of  any  emotion  whatever :  composed 
out  of  feelings  solely.  Canto  XV  of  the  Inferno 
(Brunette  Latini)  is  a  working  up  of  the  emotion 
evident  in  the  situation ;  but  the  effect,  though  single 
as  that  of  any  work  of  art,  is  obtained  by  consider- 
able complexity  of  detail.  The  last  quatrain  gives 
an  image,  a  feeling  attaching  to  an  image,  which 
"  came,"  which  did  not  develop  simply  out  of  what 
precedes,  but  which  was  probably  in  suspension  in 
the  poet's  mind  until  the  proper  combination  arrived 
for  it  to  add  itself  to.  The  poet's  mind  is  in  fact  a 
receptacle  for  seizing  and  storing  up  numberless  feel- 
ings, phrases,  images,  which  remain  there  until  all 
the  particles  which  can  unite  to  form  a  new  com- 
pound are  present  together. 

If  you  compare  several  representative  passages  of 
the  greatest  poetry  you  see  how  great  is  the  variety 
of  types  of  combination,  and  also  how  completely  any 
semi-ethical  criterion  of  "  sublimity  "  misses  the  mark. 
For  it  is  not  the  t(  greatness,"  the  intensity,  of  the 
emotions,  the  components,  but  the  intensity  of  the 
artistic  process,  the  pressure,  so  to  speak,  under 
which  the  fusion  takes  place,  that  counts.  The 
D  49 


The  Sacred  Wood 

episode  of  Paolo  and  Francesca  employs  a  definite 
emotion,  but  the  intensity  of  the  poetry  is  something 
quite  different  from  whatever  intensity  in  the  supposed 
experience  it  may  give  the  impression  of.  It  is  no 
more  intense,  furthermore,  than  Canto  XXVI,  the 
voyage  of  Ulysses,  which  has  not  the  direct  depend- 
ence upon  an  emotion.  Great  variety  is  possible  in 
the  process  of  transmution  of  emotion :  the  murder 
of  Agamemnon,  or  the  agony  of  Othello,  gives  an 
artistic  effect  apparently  closer  to  a  possible  original 
than  the  scenes  from  Dante.  In  the  Agamemnon, 
the  artistic  emotion  approximates  to  the  emotion  of 
an  actual  spectator;  in  Othello  to  the  emotion  of 
the  protagonist  himself.  But  the  difference  between 
art  and  the  event  is  always  absolute ;  the  combina- 
tion which  is  the  murder  of  Agamemnon  is  probably 
as  complex  as  that  which  is  the  voyage  of  Ulysses. 
In  either  case  there  has  been  a  fusion  ef  elements. 
The  ode  of  Keats  contains  a  number  of  feelings 
which  have  nothing  particular  to  do  with  the  night- 
ingale, but  which  the  nightingale,  partly,  perhaps, 
because  of  its  attractive  name,  and  partly  because  of 
its  reputation,  served  to  bring  together. 

The  point  of  view  which  I  am  struggling  to  attack 
is  perhaps  related  to  the  metaphysical  theory  of  the 
substantial  unity  of  the  soul :  for  my  meaning  is,  that 
the  poet  has,  not  a  "personality"  to  express,  but  a 
particular  medium,  which  is  only  a  medium  and  not 
a  personality,  in  which  impressions  and  experiences 
combine  in  peculiar  and  unexpected  ways.  Im- 
pressions and  experiences  which  are  important 
for  the  man  may  take  no  place  in  the  poetry, 
and  those  which  become  important  in  the  poetry 
50 


Tradition  and  the  Individual  Talent 

may  play  quite  a  negligible  part  in  the  man,  the 
personality. 

I  will  quote  a  passage  which  is  unfamiliar  enough 
to  be  regarded  with  fresh  attention  in  the  light — or 
darkness — of  these  observations : 

And  now  methinks  I  could  e'en  chide  myself 
For  doating  on  her  beauty,  though  her  death 
Shall  be  revenged  after  no  common  action. 
Does  the  silkworm  expend  her  yellow  labours 
For  thee  ?    For  thee  does  she  undo  herself? 
Are  lordships  sold  to  maintain  ladyships 
For  the  poor  benefit  of  a  bewildering  minute? 
Why  does  yon  fellow  falsify  highways, 
And  put  his  life  between  the  judge's  lips, 
To  refine  such  a  thing — keeps  horse  and  men 
To  beat  their  valours  for  her?  .  .  . 

In  this  passage  (as  is  evident  if  it  is  taken  in  its  con- 
text) there  is  a  combination  of  positive  and  negative 
emotions:  an  intensely  strong  attraction  toward 
beauty  and  an  equally  intense  fascination  by  the 
ugliness  which  is  contrasted  with  it  and  which 
destroys  it.  This  balance  of  contrasted  emotion  is 
in  the  dramatic  situation  to  which  the  speech  is 
pertinent,  but  that  situation  alone  is  inadequate  to 
it.  This  is,  so  to  speak,  the  structural  emotion,  pro- 
vided by  the  drama.  But  the  whole  effect,  the 
dominant  tone,  is  due  to  the  fact  that  a  number  of 
floating  feelings,  having  an  affinity  to  this  emotion  by 
no  means  superficially  evident,  have  combined  with  it 
to  give  us  a  new  art  emotion. 

It  is  not  in  his   personal  emotions,  the  emotions 
provoked  by   particular   events   in  his  life,  that  the 
poet  is  in  any  way  remarkable  or  interesting.     His 
51 


The  Sacred  Wood 

particular  emotions  may  be  simple,  or  crude,  or  flat. 
The   emotion  in  his  poetry  will  be  a  very  complex 
thing,  but  not  with  the  complexity  of  the  emotions 
of   people    who    have    very     complex    or    unusual 
emotions  in  life.     One  error,  in  fact,  of  eccentricity  in 
poetry  is  to  seek  for  new  human  emotions  to  express  : 
and  in  this  search  for  novelty  in  the  wrong  place  it 
discovers  the  perverse.     The  business  of  the  poet  is 
not   to  find  new  emotions,  but  to  use  the  ordinary 
ones  and,  in  working  them   up  into  poetry,  to  express 
feelings  which   are   not   in   actual   emotions  at  all. 
And  emotions  which  he  has  never  experienced  will 
serve  his  turn  as  well  as  those  familiar  to  him.     Con- 
sequently, we  must  believe  that  "  emotion  recollected 
in   tranquillity"   is   an  inexact  formula.      For   it   is 
neither  emotion,   nor  recollection,  nor,  without  dis- 
tortion of  meaning,  tranquillity.     It  is  a  concentra- 
tion, and  a  new  thing  resulting  from  the  concentration, 
of  a  very  great  number  of  experiences  which  to  the 
practical   and   active  person  would  not  seem  to  be 
experiences  at  all ;  it  is  a  concentration  which  does 
not  happen   consciously  or  of  deliberation.     These 
experiences  are  not  "recollected,"  and  they  finally 
unite  in  an  atmosphere  which  is  "  tranquil  "  only  in 
that  it  is  a  passive  attending  upon  the  event.     Of 
course  this  is  not  quite  the  whole  story.     There  is  a 
great  deal,  in  the  writing  of  poetry,  which  must  be 
conscious  and  deliberate.     In  fact,  the  bad  poet  is 
usually    unconscious   where  he   ought    to    be    con- 
scious, and  conscious  where  he  ought  to  be  uncon- 
scious.    Both  errors  tend  to  make  him  "personal." 
Poetry   is  not   a  turning  loose  of  emotion,  but   an 
escape  from   emotion;   it  is  not  the  expression  of 
52 


Tradition  and  the  Individual  Talent 

personality,  but  an  escape  from  personality.  But, 
of  course,  only  those  who  have  personality  and 
emotions  know  what  it  means  to  want  to  escape  from 
these  things. 

Ill 

6  5£  PoOs  fous  deibrepfo  TI  Kal  &ira0ts  tanv 

This  essay  proposes  to  halt  at  the  frontier  of  meta- 
physics or  mysticism,  and  confine  itself  to  such 
practical  conclusions  as  can  be  applied  by  the  re- 
sponsible person  interested  in  poetry.  To  divert 
interest  from  the  poet  to  the  poetry  is  a  laudable  aim  : 
for  it  would  conduce  to  a  juster  estimation  of  actual 
poetry,  good  and  bad.  There  are  many  people  who 
appreciate  the  expression  of  sincere  emotion  in  verse, 
and  there  is  a  smaller  number  of  people  who  can 
appreciate  technical  excellence.  But  very  few  know 
when  there  is  expression  of  significant  emotion, 
emotion  which  has  its  life  in  the  poem  and  not  in 
the  history  of  the  poet.  The  emotion  of  art  is 
impersonal.  And  the  poet  cannot  reach  this  im- 
personality without  surrendering  himself  wholly  to 
the  work  to  be  done.  And  he  is  not  likely  to  know 
what  is  to  be  done  unless  he  lives  in  what  is  not 
merely  the  present,  but  the  present  moment  of  the 
past,  unless  he  is  conscious,  not  of  what  is  dead,  but 
of  what  is  already  living. 


53 


The  Possibility  of  a  Poetic  Drama   o       o 

THE  questions — why  there  is  no  poetic  drama 
to-day,  how  the  stage  has  lost  all  hold  on 
literary  art,  why  so  many  poetic  plays  are  written 
which  can  only  be  read,  and  read,  if  at  all,  without 
pleasure — have  become  insipid,  almost  academic. 
The  usual  conclusion  is  either  that  "  conditions  "  are 
too  much  for  us,  or  that  we  really  prefer  other  types 
of  literature,  or  simply  that  we  are  uninspired.  As  for 
the  last  alternative,  it  is  not  to  be  entertained ;  as  for 
the  second,  what  type  do  we  prefer  ? ;  and  as  for  the 
first,  no  one  has  ever  shown  me  "conditions,"  except 
of  the  most  superficial.  The  reasons  for  raising  the 
question  again  are  first  that  the  majority,  perhaps, 
certainly  a  large  number,  of  poets  hanker  for  the 
stage  ;  and  second,  that  a  not  negligible  public  appears 
to  want  verse  plays.  Surely  there  is  some  legitimate 
craving,  not  restricted  to  a  few  persons,  which  only 
the  verse  play  can  satisfy.  And  surely  the  critical 
attitude  is  to  attempt  to  analyse  the  conditions  and 
the  other  data.  If  there  comes  to  light  some  con- 
clusive obstacle,  the  investigation  should  at  least  help 
us  to  turn  our  thoughts  to  more  profitable  pursuits ; 
and  if  there  is  not,  we  may  hope  to  arrive  eventually 
at  some  statement  of  conditions  which  might  be 
altered.  Possibly  we  shall  find  that  our  incapacity 
has  a  deeper  source  :  the  arts  have  at  times  flourished 
54 


The  Possibility  of  a  Poetic  Drama 

when  there  was  no  drama;  possibly  we  are  incom- 
petent altogether;  in  that  case  the  stage  will  be, 
not  the  seat,  but  at  all  events  a  symptom,  of  the 
malady. 

From  the  point  of  view  of  literature,  the  drama  is 
only  one  among  several  poetic  forms.     The  epic,  the 
ballad,  the  chanson  de  geste,  the  forms  of  Provence 
and  of  Tuscany,  all  found  their  perfection  by  serving 
particular  societies.     The  forms   of  Ovid,  Catullus, 
Propertius,  served  a  society  different,  and  in   some 
respects  more  civilized,  than  any  of  these ;  and  in  the 
society  of  Ovid  the  drama  as  a  form  of  art  was  com- 
paratively insignificant.     Nevertheless,  the  drama  is 
perhaps  the  most  permanent,  is   capable   of  greater 
variation   and  of  expressing  more   varied    types   of 
society,  than   any   other.     It  varied   considerably  in 
England  alone ;  but  when  one  day  it  was  discovered 
lifeless,  subsequent  forms  which  had  enjoyed  a  transi- 
tory life  were  dead  too.     I  am  not  prepared  to  under- 
take the  historical  survey ;  but  I  should  say  that  the 
poetic  drama's  autopsy  was  performed  as  much  by 
Charles  Lamb  as  by  anyone  else.     For  a  form  is  not 
wholly  dead  until  it  is  known  to  be ;  and  Lamb,  by 
exhuming  the  remains  of  dramatic  life  at  its  fullest, 
brought  a  consciousness  of  the  immense  gap  between 
present  and  past.     It  was  impossible  to  believe,  after 
that,   in   a   dramatic   "tradition."    The  relation    of 
Byron's  English  Bards  and  the  poems  of  Crabbe  to 
the  work  of  Pope  was  a  continuous  tradition ;  but  the 
relation  of  The  Cenci  to   the   great  English  drama 
is  almost  that  of  a  reconstruction  to  an  original.     By 
losing  tradition,  we  lose  our  hold  on  the  present ;  but 
so  far  as  there  was  any  dramatic  tradition  in  Shelley's 
55 


The  Sacred  Wood 

day  there  was  nothing  worth  the  keeping.  There 
is  all  the  difference  between  preservation  and 
restoration. 

The  Elizabethan  Age  in  England  was  able  to  absorb 
a  great  quantity  of  new  thoughts  and  new  images, 
almost  dispensing  with  tradition,  because  it  had  this 
great  form  of  its  own  which  imposed  itself  on  every- 
thing that  came  to  it.  Consequently,  the  blank  verse 
of  their  plays  accomplished  a  subtlety  and  conscious- 
ness, even  an  intellectual  power,  that  no  blank  verse 
since  has  developed  or  even  repeated ;  elsewhere  this 
age  is  crude,  pedantic,  or  loutish  in  comparison  with 
its  contemporary  France  or  Italy.  The  nineteenth 
century  had  a  good  many  fresh  impressions;  but  it 
had  no  form  in  which  to  confine  them.  Two  men, 
Wordsworth  and  Browning,  hammered  out  forms 
for  themselves  —  personal  forms,  The  Excursion^ 
Sordelh)  The  Ring  and  the  Book>  Dramatic  Mono- 
logues; but  no  man  can  invent  a  form,  create 
a  taste  for  it,  and  perfect  it  too.  Tennyson,  who 
might  unquestionably  have  been  a  consummate 
master  of  minor  forms,  took  to  turning  out  large 
patterns  on  a  machine.  As  for  Keats  and  Shelley, 
they  were  too  young  to  be  judged,  and  they  were 
trying  one  form  after  another. 

These  poets  were  certainly  obliged  to  consume  vast 
energy  in  this  pursuit  of  form,  which  could  never 
lead  to  a  wholly  satisfying  result.  There  has  only  been 
one  Dante ;  and,  after  all,  Dante  had  the  benefit  of 
years  of  practice  in  forms  employed  and  altered 
by  numbers  of  contemporaries  and  predecessors ;  he 
did  not  waste  the  years  of  youth  in  metric  invention ; 
and  when  he  came  to  the  Commedia  he  knew  how 

56 


The  Possibility  of  a  Poetic  Drama 

to  pillage  right  and  left.  To  have,  given  into  one's 
hands,  a  crude  form,  capable  of  indefinite  refinement, 
and  to  be  the  person  to  see  the  possibilities — 
Shakespeare  was  very  fortunate.  And  it  is  perhaps 
the  craving  for  some  such  donnee  which  draws  us  on 
toward  the  present  mirage  of  poetic  drama. 

But  it  is  now  very  questionable  whether  there  are 
more  than  two  or  three  in  the  present  generation  who 
are  capable,  the  least  little  bit,  of  benefiting  by  such 
advantages  were  they  given.  At  most  two  or  three 
actually  devote  themselves  to  this  pursuit  of  form  for 
which  they  have  little  or  no  public  recognition.  To 
create  a  form  is  not  merely  to  invent  a  shape,  a  rhyme 
or  rhythm.  It  is  also  the  realization  of  the  whole 
appropriate  content  of  this  rhyme  or  rhythm.  The 
sonnet  of  Shakespeare  is  not  merely  such  and  such  a 
pattern,  but  a  precise  way  of  thinking  and  feeling. 
The  framework  which  was  provided  for  the  Elizabethan 
dramatist  was  not  merely  blank  verse  and  the  five-act 
play  and  the  Elizabethan  playhouse ;  it  was  not  merely 
the  plot — for  the  poets  incorporated,  remodelled, 
adapted  or  invented,  as  occasion  suggested.  It  was 
also  the  half-formed  vA.i},  the  "  temper  of  the  age  "  (an 
unsatisfactory  phrase),  a  preparedness,  a  habit  on  the 
part  of  the  public,  to  respond  to  particular  stimuli. 
There  is  a  book  to  be  written  on  the  commonplaces 
of  any  great  dramatic  period,  the  handling  of  Fate  or 
Death,  the  recurrence  of  mood,  tone,  situation.  We 
should  see  then  just  how  little  each  poet  had  to  do ; 
only  so  much  as  would  make  a  play  his,  only  what  was 
really  essential  to  make  it  different  from  anyone  else's. 
When  there  is  this  economy  of  effort  it  is  possible  to 
have  several,  even  many,  good  poets  at  once.  The 
57 


The  Sacred  Wood 

great  ages  did  not  perhaps  produce  much  more  talent 
than  ours ;  but  less  talent  was  wasted. 

Now  in  a  formless  age  there  is  very  little  hope  for 
the  minor  poet  to  do  anything  worth  doing ;  and  when 
I  say  minor  I  mean  very  good  poets  indeed :  such  as 
filled  the  Greek  anthology  and  the  Elizabethan  song- 
books  ;  even  a  Herrick ;  but  not  merely  second-rate 
poets,  for  Denham  and  Waller  have  quite  another  im- 
portance, occupying  points  in  the  development  of  a 
major  form.  When  everything  is  set  out  for  the  minor 
poet  to  do,  he  may  quite  frequently  come  upon  some 
trouvaille,  even  in  the  drama :  Peele  and  Brome  are 
examples.  Under  the  present  conditions,  the  minor 
poet  has  too  much  to  do.  And  this  leads  to  another 
reason  for  the  incompetence  of  our  time  in  poetic 
drama. 

Permanent  literature  is  always  a  presentation :  either 
a  presentation  of  thought,  or  a  presentation  of  feeling 
by  a  statement  of  events  in  human  action  or  objects  in 
the  external  world.  In  earlier  literature — to  avoid  the 
word  "  classic  " — we  find  both  kinds,  and  sometimes, 
as  in  some  of  the  dialogues  of  Plato,  exquisite 
combinations  of  both.  Aristotle  presents  thought, 
stripped  to  the  essential  structure,  and  he  is  a 
great  writer.  The  Agamemnon  or  Macbeth  is 
equally  a  statement,  but  of  events.  They  are  as 
much  works  of  the  "intellect"  as  the  writings  of 
Aristotle.  There  are  more  recent  works  of  art  which 
have  the  same  quality  of  intellect  in  common  with 
those  of  ^Eschylus  and  Shakespeare  and  Aristotle : 
Education  Sentimentale  is  one  of  them.  Compare 
it  with  such  a  book  as  Vanity  Fair  and  you  will  see 
that  the  labour  of  the  intellect  consisted  largely  in  a 
58 


The  Possibility  of  a  Poetic  Drama 

purification,  in  keeping  out  a  great  deal  that  Thackeray 
allowed  to  remain  in ;  in  refraining  from  reflection,  in 
putting  into  the  statement  enough  to  make  reflection 
unnecessary.  The  case  of  Plato  is  still  more  illu- 
minating. Take  the  The&tetus.  In  a  few  opening 
words  Plato  gives  a  scene,  a  personality,  a  feeling, 
which  colour  the  subsequent  discourse  but  do  not 
interfere  with  it:  the  particular  setting,  and  the 
abstruse  theory  of  knowledge  afterwards  developed, 
co-operate  without  confusion.  Could  any  contempo- 
rary author  exhibit  such  control  ? 

In  the  nineteenth  century  another  mentality  mani- 
fested itself.  It  is  evident  in  a  very  able  and  brilliant 
poem,  Goethe's  Faust.  Marlowe's  Mephistopheles 
is  a  simpler  creature  than  Goethe's.  But  at  least 
Marlowe  has,  in  a  few  words,  concentrated  him  into  a 
statement.  He  is  there,  and  (incidentally)  he  renders 
Milton's  Satan  superfluous.  Goethe's  demon  inevi- 
tably sends  us  back  to  Goethe.  He  embodies  a 
philosophy.  A  creation  of  art  should  not  do  that :  he 
should  replace  the  philosophy.  Goethe  has  not,  that 
is  to  say,  sacrificed  or  consecrated  his  thought  to  make 
the  drama ;  the  drama  is  still  a  means.  And  this  type 
of  mixed  art  has  been  repeated  by  men  incomparably 
smaller  than  Goethe.  We  have  had  one  other  re- 
markable work  of  this  type :  Peer  Gynt.  And  we  have 
had  the  plays  of  M.  Maeterlinck  and  M.  Claudel.1 

In  the  work  of  Maeterlinck  and  Claudel  on  the  one 

1  I  should  except  The  Dynasts.  This  gigantic  panorama  is 
hardly  to  be  called  a  success,  but  it  is  essentially  an  attempt  to 
present  a  vision,  and  "sacrifices"  the  philosophy  to  the  vision, 
as  all  great  dramas  do.  Mr.  Hardy  has  apprehended  his  matter 
as  a  poet  and  an  artist. 

59 


The  Sacred  Wood 

hand,  and  those  of  M.  Bergson  on  the  other,  we  have 
the  mixture  of  the  genres  in  which  our  age  delights. 
Every  work  of  imagination  must  have  a  philosophy  ; 
and  every  philosophy  must  be  a  work  of  art — how 
often  have  we  heard  that  M.  Bergson  is  an  artist !  It 
is  a  boast  of  his  disciples.  It  is  what  the  word  "  art " 
means  to  them  that  is  the  disputable  point.  Certain 
works  of  philosophy  can  be  called  works  of  art :  much 
of  Aristotle  and  Plato,  Spinoza,  parts  of  Hume,  Mr. 
Bradley's  Principles  of  Logic,  Mr.  Russell's  essay  on 
"  Denoting  " :  clear  and  beautifully  formed  thought. 
But  this  is  not  what  the  admirers  of  Bergson,  Claudel, 
or  Maeterlinck  (the  philosophy  of  the  latter  is  a  little 
out  of  date)  mean.  They  mean  precisely  what  is  not 
clear,  but  what  is  an  emotional  stimulus.  And  as 
a  mixture  of  thought  and  of  vision  provides  more 
stimulus,  by  suggesting  both,  both  clear  thinking  and 
clear  statement  of  particular  objects  must  disappear. 

The  undigested  "idea"  or  philosophy,  the  idea- 
emotion,  is  to  be  found  also  in  poetic  dramas  which 
are  conscientious  attempts  to  adapt  a  true  structure, 
Athenian  or  Elizabethan,  to  contemporary  feeling. 
It  appears  sometimes  as  the  attempt  to  supply  the 
defect  of  structure  by  an  internal  structure.  "But 
most  important  of  all  is  the  structure  of  the  incidents. 
For  Tragedy  is  an  imitation,  not  of  men,  but  of  an 
action  and  of  life,  and  life  consists  in  action,  and  its 
end  is  a  mode  of  action,  not  a  quality." 1 

We  have  on  the  one   hand  the  "poetic"  drama, 
imitation  Greek,  imitation   Elizabethan,  or   modern- 
philosophical,  on  the  other  the  comedy  of  "ideas," 
from   Shaw   to    Galsworthy,   down  to   the   ordinary 
1  Poetics^  vi.  9.     Butcher's  translation. 
60 


The  Possibility  of  a  Poetic  Drama 

social  comedy.  The  most  ramshackle  Guitry  farce 
has  some  paltry  idea  or  comment  upon  life  put  into 
the  mouth  of  one  of  the  characters  at  the  end.  It  is 
said  that  the  stage  can  be  used  for  a  variety  of 
purposes,  that  in  only  one  of  them  perhaps  is  it 
united  with  literary  art.  A  mute  theatre  is  a 
possibility  (I  do  not  mean  the  cinema) ;  the  ballet  is 
an  actuality  (though  under-nourished) ;  opera  is  an 
institution ;  but  where  you  have  "  imitations  of  life  " 
on  the  stage,  with  speech,  the  only  standard  that  we 
can  allow  is  the  standard  of  the  work  of  art,  aiming  at 
the  same  intensity  at  which  poetry  and  the  other 
forms  of  art  aim.  From  that  point  of  view  the 
Shavian  drama  is  a  hybrid  as  the  Maeterlinckian 
drama  is,  and  we  need  express  no  surprise  at  their 
belonging  to  the  same  epoch.  Both  philosophies  are 
popularizations :  the  moment  an  idea  has  been 
transferred  from  its  pure  state  in  order  that  it  may 
become  comprehensible  to  the  inferior  intelligence  it 
has  lost  contact  with  art.  It  can  remain  pure  only 
by  being  stated  simply  in  the  form  of  general  truth, 
or  by  being  transmuted,  as  the  attitude  of  Flaubert 
toward  the  small  bourgeois  is  transformed  in  Edu- 
cation Sentimentdle.  It  has  there  become  so 
identified  with  the  reality  that  you  can  no  longer  say 
what  the  idea  is. 

The  essential  is  not,  of  course,  that  drama  should 
be  written  in  verse,  or  that  we  should  be  able  to 
extenuate  our  appreciation  of  broad  farce  by 
occasionally  attending  a  performance  of  a  play  of 
Euripides  where  Professor  Murray's  translation  is  sold 
at  the  door.  The  essential  is  to  get  upon  the  stage 
this  precise  statement  of  life  which  is  at  the  same 
6l 


The  Sacred  Wood 
i 

time  a  point  of  view,  a  world — a  world  which  the 
author's  mind  has  subjected  to  a  complete  process  of 
simplification.  I  do  not  find  that  any  drama  which 
"embodies  a  philosophy"  of  the  author's  (like 
Faust)  or  which  illustrates  any  social  theory  (like 
Shaw's)  can  possibly  fulfil  the  requirements — though 
a  place  might  be  left  for  Shaw  if  not  for  Goethe. 
And  the  world  of  Ibsen  and  the  world  of  Tchehov 
are  not  enough  simplified,  universal. 

Finally,  we  must  take  into  account  the  instability 
of  any  art — the  drama,  music,  dancing — which 
depends  upon  representation  by  performers.  The 
intervention  of  performers  introduces  a  complication 
of  economic  conditions  which  is  in  itself  likely  to  be 
injurious.  A  struggle,  more  or  less  unconscious, 
between  the  creator  and  the  interpreter  is  almost 
inevitable.  The  interest  of  a  performer  is  almost 
certain  to  be  centred  in  himself:  a  very  slight 
acquaintance  with  actors  and  musicians  will  testify. 
The  performer  is  interested  not  in  form  but  in 
opportunities  for  virtuosity  or  in  the  communication 
of  his  "personality";  the  formlessness,  the  lack  of 
intellectual  clarity  and  distinction  in  modern  music, 
the  great  physical  stamina  and  physical  training 
which  it  often  requires,  are  perhaps  signs  of  the 
triumph  of  the  performer.  The  consummation  of 
the  triumph  of  the  actor  over  the  play  is  perhaps 
the  productions  of  the  Guitry. 

The  conflict  is  one  which  certainly  cannot  be 
terminated  by  the  utter  rout  of  the  actor  profession. 
For  one  thing,  the  stage  appeals  to  too  many  demands 
besides  the  demand  for  art  for  that  to  be  possible ; 
and  also  we  need,  unfortunately,  something  more 
62 


The  Possibility  of  a  Poetic  Drama 

than  refined  .automatons.  Occasionally  attempts 
have  been  made  to  "get  around"  the  actor,  to 
envelop  him  in  masks,  to  set  up  a  few  "  conventions  " 
for  him  to  stumble  over,  or  even  to  develop  little 
breeds  of  actors  for  some  special  Art  drama.  This 
meddling  with  nature  seldom  succeeds ;  nature 
usually  overcomes  these  obstacles.  Possibly  the 
majority  of  attempts  to  confect  a  poetic  drama  have 
begun  at  the  wrong  end;  they  have  aimed  at  the 
small  public  which  wants  "poetry."  ("Novices," 
says  Aristotle,  "  in  the  art  attain  to  finish  of  diction 
and  precision  of  portraiture  before  they  can  construct 
the  plot.")  The  Elizabethan  drama  was  aimed  at  a 
public  which  wanted  entertainment  of  a  crude  sort, 
but  would  stand  a  good  deal  of  poetry ;  our  problem 
should  be  to  take  a  form  of  entertainment,  and  subject 
it  to  the  process  which  would  leave  it  a  form  of  art. 
Perhaps  the  music-hall  comedian  is  the  best  material. 
I  am  aware  that  this  is  a  dangerous  suggestion  to 
make.  For  every  person  who  is  likely  to  consider  it 
seriously  there  are  a  dozen  toy  makers  who  would 
leap  to  tickle  aesthetic  society  into  one  more  quiver 
and  giggle  of  art  debauch.  Very  few  treat  art  seri- 
ously. There  are  those  who  treat  it  solemnly,  and 
will  continue  to  write  poetic  pastiches  of  Euripides 
and  Shakespeare ;  and  there  are  others  who  treat  it  as 
a  joke. 


Euripides  and  Professor  Murray      o       o 

THE  recent  appearance  of  Miss  Sybil  Thorndyke 
as  Medea  at  the  Holborn  Empire  is  an  event 
which  has  a  bearing  upon  three  subjects  of  con- 
siderable interest:  the  drama,  the  present  standing 
of  Greek  literature,  and  the  importance  of  good 
contemporary  translation.  On  the  occasion  on  which 
I  was  present  the  performance  was  certainly  a 
success ;  the  audience  was  large,  it  was  attentive,  and 
its  applause  was  long.  Whether  the  success  was 
due  to  Euripides  is  uncertain  ;  whether  it  was  due  to 
Professor  Murray  is  not  proved;  but  that  it  was  in 
considerable  measure  due  to  Miss  Thorndyke  there 
is  no  doubt.  To  have  held  the  centre  of  the  stage 
for  two  hours  in  a  role  which  requires  both  extreme 
violence  and  restraint,  a  role  which  requires  simple 
force  and  subtle  variation;  to  have  sustained  so 
difficult  a  role  almost  without  support;  this  was  a 
legitimate  success.  The  audience,  or  what  could  be 
seen  of  it  from  one  of  the  cheaper  seats,  was  serious 
and  respectful  and  perhaps  inclined  to  self-approval 
at  having  attended  the  performance  of  a  Greek  play ; 
but  Miss  Thorndyke's  acting  might  have  held  almost 
any  audience.  It  employed  all  the  conventions,  the 
theatricalities,  of  the  modern  stage ;  yet  her  person- 
ality triumphed  over  not  only  Professor  Murray's 
verse  but  her  own  training. 


Euripides  and  Professor  Murray 

The  question  remains  whether  the  production  was 
a  "work  of  art."  The  rest  of  the  cast  appeared 
slightly  ill  at  ease;  the  nurse  was  quite  a  tolerable 
nurse  of  the  crone  type;  Jason  was  negative;  the 
messenger  was  uncomfortable  at  having  to  make  such 
a  long  speech ;  and  the  refined  Dalcroze  chorus  had 
mellifluous  voices  which  rendered  their  lyrics  happily 
inaudible.  All  this  contributed  toward  the  high-brow 
effect  which  is  so  depressing;  and  we  imagine  that 
the  actors  of  Athens,  who  had  to  speak  clearly 
enough  for  20,000  auditors  to  be  able  to  criticize  the 
versification,  would  have  been  pelted  with  figs  and 
olives  had  they  mumbled  so  unintelligibly  as  most 
of  this  troupe.  But  the  Greek  actor  spoke  in  his 
own  language,  and  our  actors  were  forced  to  speak 
in  the  language  of  Professor  Gilbert  Murray.  So 
that  on  the  whole  we  may  say  that  the  performance 
was  an  interesting  one. 

I  do  not  believe,  however,  that  such  performances 
will  do  very  much  to  rehabilitate  Greek  literature  or 
our  own,  unless  they  stimulate  a  desire  for  better 
translations.  The  serious  auditors,  many  of  whom 
I  observed  to  be  like  myself  provided  with  Professor 
Murray's  eighteenpenny  translation,  were  probably 
not  aware  that  Miss  Thorndyke,  in  order  to  succeed 
as  well  as  she  did,  was  really  engaged  in  a  struggle 
against  the  translator's  verse.  She  triumphed  over 
it  by  attracting  our  attention  to  her  expression  and 
tone  and  making  us  neglect  her  words ;  and  this,  of 
course,  was  not  the  dramatic  method  of  Greek  acting 
at  its  best.  The  English  and  Greek  languages 
remained  where  they  were.  But  few  persons  realize 
that  the  Greek  language  and  the  Latin  language,  and, 
E  65 


The  Sacred  Wood 

therefore^  we  say,  the  English  language,  are  within  our 
lifetime  passing  through  a  critical  period.  The 
Classics  have,  during  the  latter  part  of  the  nineteenth 
century  and  up  to  the  present  moment,  lost  their 
place  as  a  pillar  of  the  social  and  political  system — 
such  as  the  Established  Church  still  is.  If  they  are 
to  survive,  to  justify  themselves  as  literature,  as  an 
element  in  the  European  mind,  as  the  foundation  for 
the  literature  we  hope  to  create,  they  are  very  badly 
in  need  of  persons  capable  of  expounding  them.  We 
need  some  one — not  a  member  of  the  Church  of 
Rome,  and  perhaps  preferably  not  a  member  of  the 
Church  of  England — to  explain  how  vital  a  matter 
it  is,  if  Aristotle  may  be  said  to  have  been  a  moral 
pilot  of  Europe,  whether  we  shall  or  shall  not  drop 
that  pilot.  And  we  need  a  number  of  educated 
poets  who  shall  at  least  have  opinions  about  Greek 
drama,  and  whether  it  is  or  is  not  of  any  use  to  us. 
And  it  must  be  said  that  Professor  Gilbert  Murray 
is  not  the  man  for  this.  Greek  poetry  will  never 
have  the  slightest  vitalizing  effect  upon  English 
poetry  if  it  can  only  appear  masquerading  as  a 
vulgar  debasement  of  the  eminently  personal  idiom 
of  Swinburne.  These  are  strong  words  to  use  against 
the  most  popular  Hellenist  of  his  time ;  but  we  must 
witness  of  Professor  Murray  ere  we  die  that  these 
things  are  not  otherwise  but  thus. 

This  is  really  a  point  of  capital  importance.  That 
the  most  conspicuous  Greek  propagandist  of  the  day 
should  almost  habitually  use  two  words  where  the 
Greek  language  requires  one,  and  where  the  English 
language  will  provide  him  with  one ;  that  he  should 
render  o-Kiav  by  "grey  shadow";  and  that  he  should 
66 


Euripides  and  Professor  Murray 

stretch  the  Greek  brevity  to  fit  the  loose  frame  of 
William  Morris,  and  blur  the  Greek  lyric  to  the  fluid 
haze  of  Swinburne  ;  these  are  not  faults  of  infinitesimal 
insignificance.  The  first  great  speech  of  Medea  Mr. 
Murray  begins  with  : 

Women  of  Corinth,  I  am  come  to  show 
My  face,  lest  ye  despise  me.  .  .  . 


We  find  in  the  Greek,  egijXOov  So/xwv.     "Show  my 
face,"  therefore,  is  Mr.  Murray's  gift. 

This  thing  undreamed  of,  sudden  from  on  high, 
Hath  sapped  my  soul  :  I  dazzle  where  I  stand, 
The  cup  of  all  life  shattered  in  my  hand.  .  .  . 

Again,  we  find  that  the  Greek  is  : 

€/J.ol  5'  &e\irTov  irpay/J.a  irpoffireabi'  rude 
Kal  /3ioi> 


So,  here  are  two  striking  phrases  which  we  owe  to 
Mr.  Murray;  it  is  he  who  has  sapped  our  soul  and 
shattered  the  cup  of  all  life  for  Euripides.  And  these 
are  only  random  examples. 

OJIK    ZffTIV    d\\7J    (f)pT]V    fJUaKfiOVUT^pa 

becomes  "  no  bloodier  spirit  between  heaven  and 
hell  "  !  Surely  we  know  that  Professor  Murray  is 
acquainted  with  "  Sister  Helen  "  ?  Professor  Murray 
has  simply  interposed  between  Euripides  and  our- 
selves a  barrier  more  impenetrable  than  the  Greek 
language.  We  do  not  reproach  him  for  preferring, 
apparently,  Euripides  to  ^Eschylus.  But  if  he  does, 
he  should  at  least  appreciate  Euripides.  And  it  is 
inconceivable  that  anyone  with  a  genuine  feeling  for 
67 


The  Sacred  Wood 

the  sound  of  Greek  verse  should  deliberately  elect  the 
William  Morris  couplet,  the  Swinburne  lyric,  as  a  just 
equivalent. 

As  a  poet,  Mr.  Murray  is  merely  a  very  insignificant 
follower  of  the  pre-Raphaelite  movement.  As  a 
Hellenist,  he  is  very  much  of  the  present  day,  and 
a  very  important  figure  in  the  day.  This  day  began, 
in  a  sense,  with  Tylor  and  a  few  German  anthro- 
pologists ;  since  then  we  have  acquired  sociology  and 
social  psychology,  we  have  watched  the  clinics  of 
Ribot  and  Janet,  we  have  read  books  from  Vienna 
and  heard  a  discourse  of  Bergson ;  a  philosophy 
arose  at  Cambridge;  social  emancipation  crawled 
abroad ;  our  historical  knowledge  has  of  course 
increased ;  and  we  have  a  curious  Freudian-social- 
mystical-rationalistic-higher-critical  interpretation  of 
the  Classics  and  what  used  to  be  called  the 
Scriptures.  I  do  not  deny  the  very  great  value  of  all 
work  by  scientists  in  their  own  departments,  the 
great  interest  also  of  this  work  in  detail  and  in  its 
consequences.  Few  books  are  more  fascinating  than 
those  of  Miss  Harrison,  Mr.  Cornford,  or  Mr.  Cooke, 
when  they  burrow  in  the  origins  of  Greek  myths  and 
rites;  M.  Durkheim,  with  his  social  consciousness, 
and  M.  Levy-Bruhl,  with  his  Bororo  Indians  who 
convince  themselves  that  they  are  parroquets,  are 
delightful  writers.  A  number  of  sciences  have  sprung 
up  in  an  almost  tropical  exuberance  which  un- 
doubtedly excites  our  admiration,  and  the  garden, 
not  unnaturally,  has  come  to  resemble  a  jungle. 
Such  men  as  Tylor,  and  Robertson  Smith,  and 
Wilhelm  Wundt,  who  early  fertilized  the  soil,  would 
hardly  recognize  the  resulting  vegetation ;  and  indeed 
68 


Euripides  and  Professor  Murray 

poor  Wundt's  Volkerpsychologie  was  a  musty  relic 
before  it  was  translated. 

All  these  events  are  useful  and  important  in  their 
phase,  and  they  have  sensibly  affected  our  attitude 
towards  the  Classics  ;  and  it  is  this  phase  of  classical 
study  that  Professor  Murray — the  friend  and  inspirer 
of  Miss  Jane  Harrison — represents.  The  Greek  is  no 
longer  the  awe-inspiring  Belvedere  of  Winckelmann, 
Goethe,  and  Schopenhauer,  the  figure  of  which 
Walter  Pater  and  Oscar  Wilde  offered  us  a  slightly 
debased  re-edition.  And  we  realize  better  how 
different — not  how  much  more  Olympian — were  the 
conditions  of  the  Greek  civilization  from  ours ;  and  at 
the  same  time  Mr.  Zimmern  has  shown  us  how  the 
Greek  dealt  with  analogous  problems.  Incidentally  we 
do  not  believe  that  a  good  English  prose  style  can 
be  modelled  upon  Cicero,  or  Tacitus,  or  Thucydides. 
If  Pindar  bores  us,  we  admit  it ;  we  are  not  certain 
that  Sappho  was  very  much  greater  than  Catullus ;  we 
hold  various  opinions  about  Vergil;  and  we  think 
more  highly  of  Petronius  than  our  grandfathers  did. 

It  is  to  be  hoped  that  we  may  be  grateful  to 
Professor  Murray  and  his  friends  for  what  they  have 
done,  while  we  endeavour  to  neutralize  Professor 
Murray's  influence  upon  Greek  literature  and  English 
language  in  his  translations  by  making  better  trans- 
lations. The  choruses  from  Euripides  by  H.  D.  are, 
allowing  for  errors  and  even  occasional  omissions  of 
difficult  passages,  much  nearer  to  both  Greek  and 
English  than  Mr.  Murray's.  But  H.  D.  and  the 
other  poets  of  the  "  Poets'  Translation  Series  "  have 
so  far  done  no  more  than  pick  up  some  of  the  more 
romantic  crumbs  of  Greek  literature;  none  of  them 

69 


The  Sacred  Wood 

has  yet  shown  himself  competent  to  attack  the 
Agamemnon.  If  we  are  to  digest  the  heavy  food 
of  historical  and  scientific  knowledge  that  we  have 
eaten  we  must  be  prepared  for  much  greater  exertions. 
We  need  a  digestion  which  can  assimilate  both 
Homer  and  Flaubert.  We  need  a  careful  study  of 
Renaissance  Humanists  and  Translators,  such  as  Mr. 
Pound  has  begun.  We  need  an  eye  which  can  see 
the  past  in  its  place  with  its  definite  differences  from 
the  present,  and  yet  so  lively  that  it  shall  be  as 
present  to  us  as  the  present.  This  is  the  creative 
eye;  and  it  is  because  Professor  Murray  has  no 
creative  instinct  that  he  leaves  Euripides  quite 
dead. 


"Rhetoric"  and  Poetic  Drama          *>       *> 

THE  death  of  Rostand  is  the  disappearance 
of  the  poet  whom,  more  than  any  other  in 
France,  we  treated  as  the  exponent  of  "rhetoric," 
thinking  of  rhetoric  as  something  recently  out  of 
fashion.  And  as  we  find  ourselves  looking  back 
rather  tenderly  upon  the  author  of  Cyrano  we  wonder 
what  this  vice  or  quality  is  that  is  associated  a*s 
plainly  with  Rostand's  merits  as  with  his  defects. 
His  rhetoric,  at  least,  suited  him  at  times  so  well, 
and  so  much  better  than  it  suited  a  much  greater 
poet,  Baudelaire,  who  is  at  times  as  rhetorical  as 
Rostand.  And  we  begin  to  suspect  that  the  word  is 
merely  a  vague  term  of  abuse  for  any  style  that  is 
bad,  that  is  so  evidently  bad  or  second-rate  that  we 
do  not  recognize  the  necessity  for  greater  precision  in 
the  phrases  we  apply  to  it. 

Our  own  Elizabethan  and  Jacobean  poetry — in  so 
nice  a  problem  it  is  much  safer  to  stick  to  one's  own 
language— is  repeatedly  called  "  rhetorical."  It  had 
this  and  that  notable  quality,  but,  when  we  wish  to 
admit  that  it  had  defects,  it  is  rhetorical.  It  had 
serious  defects,  even  gross  faults,  but  we  cannot  be 
considered  to  have  erased  them  from  our  language 
when  we  are  so  unclear  in  our  perception  of  what 
they  are.  The  fact  is  that  both  Elizabethan  prose 
and  Elizabethan  poetry  are  written  in  a  variety  of 
71 


The  Sacred  Wood 

styles  with  a  variety  of  vices.  Is  the  style  of  Lyly, 
is  Euphuism,  rhetorical?  In  contrast  to  the  elder 
style  of  Ascham  and  Elyot  which  it  assaults,  it  is  a 
clear,  flowing,  orderly  and  relatively  pure  style,  with 
a  systematic  if  monotonous  formula  of  antitheses 
and  similes.  Is  the  style  of  Nashe?  A  tumid, 
flatulent,  vigorous  style  very  different  from  Lyly's. 
Or  it  is  perhaps  the  strained  and  the  mixed 
figures  of  speech  in  which  Shakespeare  indulged  him- 
self. Or  it  is  perhaps  the  careful  declamation  of 
Jonson.  The  word  simply  cannot  be  used  as 
synonymous  with  bad  writing.  The  meanings  which 
it  has  been  obliged  to  shoulder  have  been  mostly 
opprobrious ;  but  if  a  precise  meaning  can  be  found 
for  it  this  meaning  may  occasionally  represent  a 
virtue.  It  is  one  of  those  words  which  it  is  the 
business  of  criticism  to  dissect  and  reassemble.  Let 
us  avoid  the  assumption  that  rhetoric  is  a  vice  of 
manner,  and  endeavour  to  find  a  rhetoric  of  substance 
also,  which  is  right  because  it  issues  from  what  it  has 
to  express. 

At  the  present  time  there  is  a  manifest  preference 
for  the  "conversational"  in  poetry— the  style  of 
"direct  speech,"  opposed  to  the  "oratorical"  and 
the  rhetorical;  but  if  rhetoric  is  any  convention  of 
writing  inappropriately  applied,  this  conversational 
style  can  and  does  become  a  rhetoric — or  what  is 
supposed  to  be  a  conversational  style,  for  it  is  often 
as  remote  from  polite  discourse  as  well  could  be. 
Much  of  the  second  and  third  rate  in  American  vers 
libre  is  of  this  sort;  and  much  of  the  second  and 
third  rate  in  English  Wordsworthianism.  There  is  in 
fact  no  conversational  or  other  form  which  can  be 
72 


"Rhetoric"  and  Poetic  Drama 

applied  indiscriminately;  if  a  writer  wishes  to  give 
the  effect  of  speech  he  must  positively  give  the  effect 
of  himself  talking  in  his  own  person  or  in  one  of  his 
roles ;  and  if  we  are  to  express  ourselves,  our  variety 
of  thoughts  and  feelings,  on  a  variety  of  subjects  with 
inevitable  Tightness,  we  must  adapt  our  manner  to 
the  moment  with  infinite  variations.  Examination  of 
the  development  of  Elizabethan  drama  shows  this 
progress  in  adaptation,  a  development  from  monotony 
to  variety,  a  progressive  refinement  in  the  perception 
of  the  variations  of  feeling,  and  a  progressive  elabora- 
tion of  the  means  of  expressing  these  variations. 
This  drama  is  admitted  to  have  grown  away  from  the 
rhetorical  expression,  the  bombast  speeches,  of  Kyd 
and  Marlowe  to  the  subtle  and  dispersed  utterance  of 
Shakespeare  and  Webster.  But  this  apparent  abandon- 
ment or  outgrowth  of  rhetoric  is  two  things  :  it  is 
partly  an  improvement  in  language  and  it  is  partly 
progressive  variation  in  feeling.  There  is,  of  course,  a 
long  distance  separating  the  furibund  fluency  of  old 
Hieronimo  and  the  broken  words  of  Lear.  There  is 
also  a  difference  between  the  famous 

Oh  eyes  no  eyes,  but  fountains  full  of  tears ! 
Oh  life  no  life,  but  lively  form  of  death  ! 

and  the  superb  "  additions  to  Hieronimo." l 

We  think  of  Shakespeare  perhaps  as  the  dramatist 
who  concentrates  everything  into  a  sentence,  "Pray 
you  undo  this  button,"  or  "Honest  honest  lago"; 
we  forget  that  there  is  a  rhetoric  proper  to  Shake- 
speare at  his  best  period  which  is  quite  free  from  the 

1  Of  the  authorship  it  can  only  be  said  that  the  lines  are  by 
some  admirer  of  Marlowe.  This  might  well  be  Jonson. 

73 


The  Sacred  Wood 

genuine  Shakespearean  vices  either  of  the  early  period 
or  the  late.  These  passages  are  comparable  to  the 
best  bombast  of  Kyd  or  Marlowe,  with  a  greater 
command  of  language  and  a  greater  control  of  the 
emotion.  The  Spanish  Tragedy  is  bombastic 
when  it  descends  to  language  which  was  only  the 
trick  of  its  age ;  Tamburlaine  is  bombastic  because 
it  is  monotonous,  inflexible  to  the  alterations  of 
emotion.  The  really  fine  rhetoric  of  Shakespeare 
occurs  in  situations  where  a  character  in  the  play 
sees  himself  \\\  a  dramatic  light : 

Othello.          And  say,  besides, — that  in  Aleppo  once  .  .   . 

Coriolanus.    If  you  have  writ  your  annals  true,  'tis  there, 
That  like  an  eagle  in  a  dovecote,  I 
Fluttered  your  Volscians  in  Corioli. 
Alone  I  did  it.     Boy  ! 

Timon.  Come  not  to  me  again  ;  but  say  to  Athens, 

Timon  hath  made  his  everlasting  mansion 
Upon  the  beached  verge  of  the  salt  flood  .  .  . 

It  occurs  also  once  in  Antony  and  Cleopatra,  when 
Enobarbus  is  inspired  to  see  Cleopatra  in  this 
dramatic  light : 

The  barge  she  sat  in  .  .  . 

Shakespeare  made  fun  of  Marston,  and  Jonson  made 
fun  of  Kyd.  But  in  Marston's  play  the  words  were 
expressive  of  nothing ;  and  Jonson  was  criticizing  the 
feeble  and  conceited  language,  not  the  emotion,  not 
the  "  oratory."  Jonson  is  as  oratorical  himself,  and 
the  moments  when  his  oratory  succeeds  are,  I  believe, 
the  moments  that  conform  to  our  formula.  Notably 
the  speech  of  Sylla's  ghost  in  the  induction  to  Catiline^ 
and  the  speech  of  Envy  at  the  beginning  of  The 

74 


"  Rhetoric  "  and  Poetic  Drama 

Poetaster.  These  two  figures  are  contemplating  their 
own  dramatic  importance,  and  quite  properly.  But 
in  the  Senate  speeches  in  Catiline^  how  tedious,  how 
dusty  !  Here  we  are  spectators  not  of  a  play  of 
characters,  but  of  a  play  of  forensic,  exactly  as  if  we 
had  been  forced  to  attend  the  sitting  itself.  A  speech 
in  a  play  should  never  appear  to  be  intended  to  move 
us  as  it  might  conceivably  move  other  characters  in 
the  play,  for  it  is  essential  that  we  should  preserve 
our  position  of  spectators,  and  observe  always  from 
the  outside  though  with  complete  understanding. 
The  scene  in  Julius  C&sar  is  right  because  the  object 
of  our  attention  is  not  the  speech  of  Antony 
(^Bedeutung)  but  the  effect  of  his  speech  upon  the 
rrfob,  and  Antony's  intention,  his  preparation  and 
consciousness  of  the  effect.  And  in  the  rhetorical 
speeches  from  Shakespeare  which  have  been  cited, 
we  have  this  necessary  advantage  of  a  new  clue  to 
the  character,  in  noting  the  angle  from  which  he 
views  himself.  But  when  a  character  in  a  play  makes 
a  direct  appeal  to  us,  we  are  either  the  victims  of  our 
own  sentiment,  or  we  are  in  the  presence  of  a  vicious 
rhetoric. 

These  references  ought  to  supply  some  evidence  of 
the  propriety  of  Cyrano  on  Noses.  Is  not  Cyrano 
exactly  in  this  position  of  contemplating  himself  as 
a  romantic,  a  dramatic  figure  ?  This  dramatic  sense 
on  the  part  of  the  characters  themselves  is  rare  in 
modern  drama.  In  sentimental  drama  it  appears  in 
a  degraded  form,  when  we  are  evidently  intended  to 
accept  the  character's  sentimental  interpretation  of 
himself.  In  plays  of  realism  we  often  find  parts  which 
are  never  allowed  to  be  consciously  dramatic,  for  fear, 
75 


The  Sacred  Wood 

perhaps,  of  their  appearing  less  real.  But  in  actual 
life,  in  many  of  those  situations  in  actual  life  which 
we  enjoy  consciously  and  keenly,  we  are  at  times 
aware  of  ourselves  in  this  way,  and  these  moments 
are  of  very  great  usefulness  to  dramatic  verse.  A 
very  small  part  of  acting  is  that  which  takes  place  on 
the  stage !  Rostand  had — whether  he  had  anything 
else  or  not — this  dramatic  sense,  and  it  is  what  gives 
life  to  Cyrano.  It  is  a  sense  which  is  almost  a  sense 
of  humour  (for  when  anyone  is  conscious  of  himself 
as  acting,  something  like  a  sense  of  humour  is  present). 
It  gives  Rostand's  characters — Cyrano  at  least — a 
gusto  which  is  uncommon  on  the  modern  stage.  No 
doubt  Rostand's  people  play  up  to  this  too  steadily. 
We  recognize  that  in  the  love  scenes  of  Cyrano  in 
the  garden,  for  in  Romeo  and  Juliet  the  profounder 
dramatist  shows  his  lovers  melting  into  incoherent 
unconsciousness  of  their  isolated  selves,  shows  the 
human  soul  in  the  process  of  forgetting  itself.  Rostand 
could  not  ,do  that;  but  in  the  particular  case  of 
Cyrano  on  Noses,  the  character,  the  situation,  the 
occasion  were  perfectly  suited  and  combined.  The 
tirade  generated  by  this  combination  is  not  only 
genuinely  and  highly  dramatic:  it  is  possibly  poetry 
also.  If  a  writer  is  incapable  of  composing  such  a  scene 
as  this,  so  much  the  worse  for  his  poetic  drama. 

Cyrano  satisfies,  as  far  as  scenes  like  this  can 
satisfy,  the  requirements  of  poetic  drama.  It  must 
take  genuine  and  substantial  human  emotions,  such 
emotions  as  observation  can  confirm,  typical  emotions, 
and  give  them  artistic  form  ;  the  degree  of  abstraction 
is  a  question  for  the  method  of  each  author.  In 
Shakespeare  the  form  is  determined  in  the  unity  of 


"Rhetoric"  and  Poetic  Drama 

the  whole,  as  well  as  single  scenes ;  it  is  something  to 
attain  this  unity,  as  Rostand  does,  in  scenes  if  not  the 
whole  play.  Not  only  as  a  dramatist,  but  as  a  poet, 
he  is  superior  to  Maeterlinck,  whose  drama,  in  failing 
to  be  dramatic,  fails  also  to  be  poetic.  Maeterlinck 
has  a  literary  perception  of  the  dramatic  and  a  literary 
perception  of  the  poetic,  and  he  joins  the  two;  the 
two  are  not,  as  sometimes  they  are  in  the  work  of 
Rostand,  fused.  His  characters  take  no  conscious 
delight  in  their  role — they  are  sentimental.  With 
Rostand  the  centre  of  gravity  is  in  the  expression  of 
the  emotion,  not  as  with  Maeterlinck  in  the  emotion 
which  cannot  be  expressed.  Some  writers  appear  to 
believe  that  emotions  gain  in  intensity  through  being 
inarticulate.  Perhaps  the  emotions  are  not  significant 
enough  to  endure  full  daylight. 

In  any  case,  we  may  take  our  choice :  we  may 
apply  the  term  "rhetoric"  to  the  type  of  dramatic 
speech  which  I  have  instanced,  and  then  we  must 
admit  that  it  covers  good  as  well  as  bad.  Or  we  may 
choose  to  except  this  type  of  speech  from  rhetoric. 
In  that  case  we  must  say  that  rhetoric  is  any  adornment 
or  inflation  of  speech  which'is  not  done  for  a  particular 
effect  but  for  a  general  impressiveness.  And  in  this 
case,  too,  we  cannot  allow  the  term  to  cover  all  bad 
writing. 


77 


Some  Notes  on  the  Blank  Verse  of  Chris- 
topher Marlowe     o       o       o       o       o 

"  Marloe  was  stabd  with  a  dagger,  and  dyed  swearing " 

A  MORE  friendly  critic,  Mr.  A.  C.  Swinburne, 
observes  of  this  poet  that  "the  father  of 
English  tragedy  and  the  creator  of  English  blank 
verse  was  therefore  also  the  teacher  and  the  guide  of 
Shakespeare."  In  this  sentence  there  are  two  mis- 
leading assumptions  and  two  misleading  conclusions. 
Kyd  has  as  good  a  title  to  the  first  honour  as  Mar- 
lowe; Surrey  has  a  better  title  to  the  second;  and 
Shakespeare  was  not  taught  or  guided  by  one  of  his 
predecessors  or  contemporaries  alone.  The  less 
questionable  judgment  is,  that  Marlowe  exercised  a 
strong  influence  over  later  drama,  though  not  himself 
as  great  a  dramatist  as  Kyd ;  that  he  introduced 
several  new  tones  into  blank  verse,  and  commenced 
the  dissociative  process  which  drew  it  farther  and 
farther  away  from  the  rhythms  of  rhymed  verse ; 
and  that  when  Shakespeare  borrowed  from  him, 
which  was  pretty  often  at  the  beginning,  Shake- 
speare either  made  something  inferior  or  something 
different. 

The  comparative  study  of  English  versification  at 
various  periods  is  a  large  tract  of  unwritten  history. 
To  make  a  study  of  blank  verse  alone,  would  be  to 
78 


The  Blank  Verse  of  Christopher  Marlowe 

elicit  some  curious  conclusions.  It  would  show,  I 
believe,  that  blank  verse  within  Shakespeare's  lifetime 
was  more  highly  developed,  that  it  became  the  vehicle 
of  more  varied  and  more  intense  art-emotions  than  it 
has  ever  conveyed  since ;  and  that  after  the  erection 
of  the  Chinese  Wall  of  Milton,  blank  verse  has  suffered 
not  only  arrest  but  retrogression.  That  the  blank 
verse  of  Tennyson,  for  example,  a  consummate  master 
of  this  form  in  certain  applications,  is  cruder  (not 
"  rougher "  or  less  perfect  in  technique)  than  that  of 
half  a  dozen  contemporaries  of  Shakespeare ;  cruder, 
because  less  capable  of  expressing  complicated,  subtle, 
and  surprising  emotions. 

Every  writer  who  has  written  any  blank  verse  worth 
saving  has  produced  particular  tones  which  his  verse 
and  no  other's  is  capable  of  rendering ;  and  we  should 
keep  this  in  mind  when  we  talk  about  "  influences  " 
and  "indebtedness."  Shakespeare  is  "universal" 
(if  you  like)  because  he  has  more  of  these  tones  than 
anyone  else ;  but  they  are  all  out  of  the  one  man ; 
one  man  cannot  be  more  than  one  man ;  there  might 
have  been  six  Shakespeares  at  once  without  conflicting 
frontiers;  and  to  say  that  Shakespeare  expressed 
nearly  all  human  emotions,  implying  that  he  left  very 
little  for  anyone  else,  is  a  radical  misunderstanding  of 
art  and  the  artist — a  misunderstanding  which,  even 
when  explicitly  rejected,  may  lead  to  our  neglecting 
the  effort  of  attention  necessary  to  discover  the  specific 
properties  of  the  verse  of  Shakespeare's  contemporaries. 
The  development  of  blank  verse  may  be  likened  to 
the  analysis  of  that  astonishing  industrial  product 
coal-tar.  Marlowe's  verse  is  one  of  the  earlier 
derivatives,  but  it  possesses  properties  which  are  not, 
79 


The  Sacred  Wood 

repeated  in  any  of  the  analytic  or  synthetic  blank 
verses  discovered  somewhat  later. 

The  "vices  of  style"  of  Marlowe's  and  Shake- 
speare's age  is  a  convenient  name  for  a  number  of 
vices,  no  one  of  which,  perhaps,  was  shared  by  all 
of  the  writers.  It  is  pertinent,  at  least,  to  remark 
that  Marlowe's  "  rhetoric  "  is  not,  or  not  characteristi- 
cally, Shakespeare's  rhetoric ;  that  Marlowe's  rhetoric 
consists  in  a  pretty  simple  huffe-snuffe  bombast,  while 
Shakespeare's  is  more  exactly  a  vice  of  style,  a  tortured 
perverse  ingenuity  of  images  which  dissipates  instead 
of  concentrating  the  imagination,  and  which  may  be 
due  in  part  to  influences  by  which  Marlowe  was 
untouched.  Next,  we  find  that  Marlowe's  vice  is 
one  which  he  was  gradually  attenuating,  and  even, 
what  is  more  miraculous,  turning  into  a  virtue.  And 
we  find  that  this  bard  of  torrential  imagination  recog- 
nized many  of  his  best  bits  (and  those  of  one  or  two 
others),  saved  them,  and  reproduced  them  more  than 
once,  almost  invariably  improving  them  in  the  process. 

It  is  worth  while  noticing  a  few  of  these  versions, 
because  they  indicate,  somewhat  contrary  to  usual 
opinion,  that  Marlowe  was  a  deliberate  and  conscious 
workman.  Mr.  J.  G.  Robertson  has  spotted  an 
interesting  theft  of  Marlowe's  from  Spenser.  Here  is 
Spenser  (Faery  Queent  i.  vii.  32) : 

Like  to  an  almond  tree  y-mounted  high 

On  top  of  green  Selinis  all  alone, 
With  blossoms  brave  bedecked  daintily; 

Whose  tender  locks  do  tremble  every  one 
At  every  little  breath  that  under  heaven  is  blown. 

And  herejMarlowe  (Tamburlaine^  Part  II.  Act  iv. 
sc.  Hi.) : 

80 


The  Blank  Verse  of  Christopher  Marlowe 

Like  to  an  almond  tree  y-mounted  high 

Upon  the  lofty  and  celestial  mount 

Of  evergreen  Selinus,  quaintly  deck'd 

With  blooms  more  white  than  Erycina's  brows, 

Whose  tender  blossoms  tremble  every  one 

At  every  little  breath  that  thorough  heaven  is  blown. 

This  is  interesting,  not  only  as  showing  that 
Marlowe's  talent,  like  that  of  most  poets,  was  partly 
synthetic,  but  also  because  it  seems  to  give  a  clue 
to  some  particularly  "lyric"  effects  found  in  Tam- 
burlaine>  not  in  Marlowe's  other  plays,  and  not,  I 
believe,  anywhere  else.  For  example,  the  praise  of 
Zenocrate  in  Part  II.  Act.  n.  sc.  iv. : 

Now  walk  the  angels  on  the  walls  of  heaven, 
As  sentinels  to  warn  th*  immortal  souls 
To  entertain  divine  Zenocrate :  etc. 

This  is  not  Spenser's  movement,  but  the  influence 
of  Spenser  must  be  present.  There  had  been  no 
great  blank  verse  before  Marlowe ;  but  there  was  the 
powerful  presence  of  this  great  master  of  melody 
immediately  precedent;  and  the  combination  pro- 
duced results  which  could  not  be  repeated.  I  do 
not  think  that  it  can  be  claimed  that  Peele  had  any 
influence  here. 

The  passage  quoted  from  Spenser  has  a  further 
interest.  It  will  be  noted  that  the  fourth  line  : 

With  blooms  more  white  than  Erycina's  brows 

is  Marlowe's  contribution.     Compare  this  with  these 
other  lines  of  Marlowe  : 

So  looks  my  love,  shadowing  in  her  brows 

(Tamburtaine) 

Like  to  the  shadows  of  Pyramides 

(Tambnrlainc) 

F  8l 


The  Sacred  Wood 

and  the  final  and  best  version : 

Shadowing  more  beauty  in  their  airy  brows 
Than  have  the  white  breasts  of  the  queen  of  love. 

(Doctor  Faustus) 

and  compare  the  whole  set  with  Spenser  again  (f.  Q.) : 

Upon  her  eyelids  many  graces  sate 
Under  the  shadow  of  her  even  brows, 

a  passage  which  Mr.  Robertson  says  Spenser  himself 
used  in  three  other  places. 

This  economy  is  frequent  in  Marlowe.  Within 
Tamburlaine  it  occurs  in  the  form  of  monotony, 
especially  in  the  facile  use  of  resonant  names  (e.g. 
the  recurrence  of  "Caspia"  or  "Caspian"  with  the 
same  tone  effect),  a  practice  in  which  Marlowe  was 
followed  by  Milton,  but  which  Marlowe  himself 
outgrew.  Again, 

Zenocrate,  lovlier  than  the  love  of  Jove, 
Brighter  than  is  the  silver  Rhodope, 

is  paralleled  later  by 

Zenocrate,  the  lovliest  maid  alive, 

Fairer  than  rocks  of  pearl  and  precious  stone. 

One     line     Marlowe    remodels     with     triumphant 
success : 

And  set  black  streamers  in  the  firmament 

( Tamburlaine) 

becomes 

See,  see,  where  Christ's  blood  streams  in  the  firmament ! 

(Doctor  Faustus) 

The  verse   accomplishments   of   Tamburlaim  are 
notably    two :  Marlowe    gets   into   blank   verse   the 
82 


The  Blank  Verse  of  Christopher  Marlowe 

melody  of  Spenser,  and  he  gets  a  new  driving  power 
by  reinforcing  the  sentence  period  against  the  line 
period.  The  rapid  long  sentence,  running  line  into 
line,  as  in  the  famous  soliloquies  "  Nature  com- 
pounded of  four  elements  "  and  "  What  is  beauty, 
saith  my  sufferings,  then  ?  "  marks  the  certain  escape 
of  blank  verse  from  the  rhymed  couplet,  and  from 
the  elegiac  or  rather  pastoral  note  of  Surrey,  to  which 
Tennyson  returned.  If  you  contrast  these  two  solilo- 
quies with  the  verse  of  Marlowe's  greatest  contem- 
porary, Kyd — by  no  means  a  despicable  versifier — 
you  see  the  importance  of  the  innovation  : 

The  one  took  sanctuary,  and,  being  sent  for  out, 
Was  murdered  in  Southwark  as  he  passed 
To  Greenwich,  where  the  Lord  Protector  lay. 
Black  Will  was  burned  in  Flushing  on  a  stage ; 
Green  was  hanged  at  Osbridge  in  Kent  .  .  . 

which  is  not  really  inferior  to  : 

So  these  four  abode 

Within  one  house  together ;  and  as  years 
Went  forward,  Mary  took  another  mate  ; 
But  Dora  lived  unmarried  till  her  death. 

(Tennyson,  Dora) 

In  Faustus  Marlowe  went  farther :  he  broke  up  the 
line,  to  a  gain  in  intensity,  in  the  last  soliloquy ;  and 
he  developed  a  new  and  important  conversational 
tone  in  the  dialogues  of  Faustus  with  the  devil. 
Edward  II.  has  never  lacked  consideration :  it  is 
more  desirable,  in  brief  space,  to  remark  upon  two 
plays,  one  of  which  has  been  misunderstood  and  the 
other  underrated.  These  are  the  Jew  of  Malta  and 
Dido  Queen  of  Carthage.  Of  the  first  of  these,  it  has 
always  been  said  that  the  end,  even  the  last  two  acts, 

83 


The  Sacred  Wood 

are  unworthy  of  the  first  three.  If  one  takes  the 
Jew  of  Malta  not  as  a  tragedy,  or  as  a  "  tragedy  of 
blood,"  but  as  a  farce,  the  concluding  act  becomes 
intelligible  j  and  if  we  attend  with  a  careful  ear  to  the 
versification,  we  find  that  Marlowe  develops  a  tone 
to  suit  this  farce,  and  even  perhaps  that  this  tone  is 
his  most  powerful  and  mature  tone.  I  say  farce,  but 
with  the  enfeebled  humour  of  our  times  the  word  is  a 
misnomer ;  it  is  the  farce  of  the  old  English  humour, 
the  terribly  serious,  even  savage  comic  humour,  the 
humour  which  spent  its  last  breath  on  the  decadent 
genius  of  Dickens.  It  has  nothing  in  common  with 
J.  M.  Barrie,  Captain  Bairnsfather,  or  Punch.  It  is 
the  humour  of  that  very  serious  (but  very  different) 
play,  Volpone. 

First,  be  thou  void  of  these  affections, 
Compassion,  love,  vain  hope,  and  heartless  fear ; 
Be  moved  at  nothing,  see  thou  pity  none  .  .  . 
As  for  myself,  I  walk  abroad  o'  nights, 
And  kill  sick  people  groaning  under  walls  : 
Sometimes  I  go  about  and  poison  wells  .  .  . 

and   the  last  words  of  Barabas  complete  this   pro- 
digious caricature : 

But  now  begins  th'  extremity  of  heat 
To  pinch  me  with  intolerable  pangs : 
Die,  life  !  fly,  soul !  tongue,  curse  thy  fill,  and  die  ! 

It  is  something  which   Shakespeare  could  not  do, 
and  which  he  could  not  have  understood. 

Dido  appears  to  be  a  hurried  play,  perhaps  done  to 
order  with  the  sEneid  in  front  of  him.  But  even  here 
there  is  progress.  The  account  of  the  sack  of  Troy 
is  in  this  newer  style  of  Marlowe's,  this  style  which 


The  Blank  Verse  of  Christopher  Marlowe 

secures  its  emphasis  by  always  hesitating  on  the  edge 
of  caricature  at  the  right  moment : 

The  Grecian  soldiers,  tir'd  with  ten  years  war, 
Began  to  cry,  "  Let  us  unto  our  ships, 
Troy  is  invincible,  why  stay  we  here?"  .  .  . 

By  this,  the  camp  was  come  unto  the  walls, 

And  through  the  breach  did  march  into  the  streets, 

Where,  meeting  with  the  rest,  "  Kill,  kill ! "  they  cried.  .  .  . 

And  after  him,  his  band  of  Myrmidons, 

With  balls  of  wild-fire  in  their  murdering  paws  .  .  . 

At  last,  the  soldiers  pull'd  her  by  the  heels, 
And  swung  her  howling  in  the  empty  air.  .  .  . 

We  saw  Cassandra  sprawling  in  the  streets  .  .  . 

This  is  not  Vergil,  or  Shakespeare;  it  is  pure 
Marlowe.  By  comparing  the  whole  speech  with 
Clarence's  dream,  in  Richard  ///.,  one  acquires  a 
little  insight  into  the  difference  between  Marlowe  and 
Shakespeare : 

What  scourge  for  perjury 
Can  this  dark  monarchy  afford  false  Clarence? 

There,  on  the  other  hand,  is  what  Marlowe's  style 
could  not  do ;  the  phrase  has  a  concision  which  is 
almost  classical,  certainly  Dantesque.  Again,  as  often 
with  the  Elizabethan  dramatists,  there  are  lines  in 
Marlowe,  besides  the  many  lines  that  Shakespeare 
adapted,  that  might  have  been  written  by  either  : 

If  thou  wilt  stay, 

Leap  in  mine  arms ;  mine  arms  are  open  wide ; 
If  not,  turn  from  me,  and  I'll  turn  from  thee  ; 
For  though  thou  hast  the  heart  to  say  farewell, 
I  have  not  power  to  stay  thee. 

85 


The  Sacred  Wood 

But  the  direction  in  which  Marlowe's  verse  might 
have  moved,  had  he  not  "  dyed  swearing,"  is  quite  un- 
Shakespearean,  is  toward  this  intense  and  serious  and 
indubitably  great  poetry,  which,  like  some  great 
painting  and  sculpture,  attains  its  effects  by  some- 
thing not  unlike  caricature. 


86 


Hamlet  and  His  Problems      &       <*       o 

FEW  critics  have  even  admitted  that  Hamlet 
the  play  is  the  primary  problem,  and  Hamlet  the 
character  only  secondary.  And  Hamlet  the  character 
has  had  an  especial  temptation  for  that  most  danger- 
ous type  of  critic :  the  critic  with  a  mind  which  is 
naturally  of  the  creative  order,  but  which  through 
some  weakness  in  creative  power  exercises  itself  in 
criticism  instead.  These  minds  often  find  in  Hamlet 
a  vicarious  existence  for  their  own  artistic  realization. 
Such  a  mind  had  Goethe,  who  made  of  Hamlet  a 
Werther;  and  such  had  Coleridge,  who  made  of 
Hamlet  a  Coleridge ;  and  probably  neither  of  these 
men  in  writing  about  Hamlet  remembered  that  his 
first  business  was  to  study  a  work  of  art.  The  kind 
of  criticism  that  Goethe  and  Coleridge  produced,  in 
writing  of  Hamlet,  is  the  most  misleading  kind 
possible.  For  they  both  possessed  unquestionable 
critical  insight,  and  both  make  their  critical  aberrations 
the  more  plausible  by  the  substitution — of  their  own 
Hamlet  for  Shakespeare's — which  their  creative  gift 
effects.  We  should  be  thankful  that  Walter  Pater 
did  not  fix  his  attention  on  this  play. 

Two   recent   writers,    Mr.   J.    M.   Robertson   and 

Professor  Stoll  of  the  University  of  Minnesota,  have 

issued  small  books  which  can  be  praised  for  moving 

in  the  other  direction.     Mr.  Stoll  performs  a  service 

87 


The  Sacred  Wood 

in  recalling  to  our  attention  the  labours  of  the  critics 
of  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries,1  observing 
that 

they  knew  less  about  psychology  than  more  recent 
Hamlet  critics,  but  they  were  nearer  in  spirit  to 
Shakespeare's  art ;  and  as  they  insisted  on  the  im- 
portance of  the  effect  of  the  whole  rather  than  on 
the  importance  of  the  leading  character,  they  were 
nearer,  in  their  old-fashioned  way,  to  the  secret  of 
dramatic  art  in  general. 

Qua  work  of  art,  the  work  of  art  cannot  be  inter- 
preted; there  is  nothing  to  interpret;  we  can  only 
criticize  it  according  to  standards,  in  comparison  to 
other  works  of  art ;  and  for  "  interpretation  "  the  chief 
task  is  the  presentation  of  relevant  historical  facts 
which  the  reader  is  not  assumed  to  know.  Mr. 
Robertson  points  out,  very  pertinently,  how  critics  have 
failed  in  their  "  interpretation "  of  Hamlet  by  ignor- 
ing what  ought  to  be  very  obvious:  that  Hamlet 
is  a  stratification,  that  it  represents  the  efforts  of  a 
series  of  men,  each  making  what  he  could  out  of  the 
work  of  his  predecessors.  The  Hamlet  of  Shake- 
speare will  appear  to  us  very  differently  if,  instead  of 
treating  the  whole  action  of  the  play  as  due  to  Shake- 
speare's design,  we  perceive  his  Hamlet  to  be  super- 
posed upon  much  cruder  material  which  persists  even 
in  the  final  form. 

We  know  that  there  was  an  older  play  by  Thomas 
Kyd,  that  extraordinary  dramatic  (if  not  poetic)  genius 
who  was  in  all  probability  the  author  of  two  plays  so 
dissimilar  as  the  Spanish  Tragedy  and  Arden  of 

1 1  have  never,  by  the  way,  seen  a  cogent  refutation  of  Thomas 
Rymer's  objections  to  Othello* 

88 


Hamlet  and  His  Problems 

Fever  sham  \  and  what  this  play  was  like  we  can 
guess  from  three  clues  :  from  the  Spanish  Tragedy 
itself,  from  the  tale  of  Belleforest  upon  which  Kyd's 
Hamlet  must  have  been  based,  and  from  a  version 
acted  in  Germany  in  Shakespeare's  lifetime  which 
bears  strong  evidence  of  having  been  adapted  from 
the  earlier,  not  from  the  later,  play.  From  these  three 
sources  it  is  clear  that  in  the  earlier  play  the  motive 
was  a  revenge-motive  simply ;  that  the  action  or  delay 
is  caused,  as  in  the  Spanish  Tragedy,  solely  by  the 
difficulty  of  assassinating  a  monarch  surrounded  by 
guards;  and  that  the  "madness"  of  Hamlet  was 
feigned  in  order  to  escape  suspicion,  and  successfully. 
In  the  final  play  of  Shakespeare,  on  the  other  hand, 
there  is  a  motive  which  is  more  important  than  that 
of  revenge,  and  which  explicitly  "  blunts  "  the  latter ; 
the  delay  in  revenge  is  unexplained  on  grounds  of 
necessity  or  expediency ;  and  the  effect  of  the  "  mad- 
ness "  is  not  to  lull  but  to  arouse  the  king's  suspicion. 
The  alteration  is  not  complete  enough,  however,  to 
be  convincing.  Furthermore,  there  are  verbal  parallels 
so  close  to  the  Spanish  Tragedy  as  to  leave  no  doubt 
that  in  places  Shakespeare  was  merely  revising  the 
text  of  Kyd.  And  finally  there  are  unexplained  scenes 
— the  Polonius-Laertes  and  the  Polonius-Reynaldo 
scenes — for  which  there  is  little  excuse ;  these  scenes 
are  not  in  the  verse  style  of  Kyd,  and  not  beyond  doubt 
in  the  style  of  Shakespeare.  These  Mr.  Robertson 
believes  to  be  scenes  in  the  original  play  of  Kyd 
reworked  by  a  third  hand,  perhaps  Chapman,  before 
Shakespeare  touched  the  play.  And  he  concludes, 
with  very  strong  show  of  reason,  that  the  origina 
play  of  Kyd  was,  like  certain  other  revenge  plays, 


The  Sacred  Wood 

in  two  parts  of  five  acts  each.  The  upshot  of  Mr. 
Robertson's  examination  is,  we  believe,  irrefragable : 
that  Shakespeare's  Hamlet,  so  far  as  it  is  Shake- 
speare's, is  a  play  dealing  with  the  effect  of  a  mother's 
guilt  upon  her  son,  and  that  Shakespeare  was  unable 
to  impose  this  motive  successfully  upon  the  "in- 
tractable "  material  of  the  old  play. 

Of  the  intractability  there  can  be  no  doubt.  So 
far  from  being  Shakespeare's  masterpiece,  the  play  is 
most  certainly  an  artistic  failure.  In  several  ways  the 
play  is  puzzling,  and  disquieting  as  is  none  of  the 
others.  Of  all  the  plays  it  is  the  longest  and  is 
possibly  the  one  on  which  Shakespeare  spent  most 
pains ;  and  yet  he  has  left  in  it  superfluous  and  incon- 
sistent scenes  which  even  hasty  revision  should  have 
noticed.  The  versification  is  variable.  Lines  like 

Look,  the  morn,  in  russet  mantle  clad, 
Walks  o'er  the  dew  of  yon  high  eastern  hill, 

are  of  the  Shakespeare  of  Romeo  and  Juliet*  The 
lines  in  Act  v.  sc.  ii., 

Sir,  in  my  heart  there  was  a  kind  of  fighting 

That  would  not  let  me  sleep  .  .  . 

Up  from  my  cabin, 

My  sea-gown  scarfd  about  me,  in  the  dark 

Grop'd  I  to  find  out  them :  had  my  desire ; 

Finger'd  their  packet ; 

are  of  his  quite  mature.  Both  workmanship  and 
thought  are  in  an  unstable  condition.  We  are  surely 
justified  in  attributing  the  play,  with  that  other  pro- 
foundly interesting  play  of  "  intractable  "  material  and 
astonishing  versification,  Measure  for  Measure,  to  a 
period  of  crisis,  after  which  follow  the  tragic  successes 
90 


Hamlet  and  His  Problems 

which  culminate  in  Coriolanus.  Coriolanus  may 
be  not  as  "interesting"  as  Hamlet,  but  it  is,  with 
Antony  and  Cleopatra,  Shakespeare's  most  assured 
artistic  success.  And  probably  more  people  have 
thought  Hamlet  a  work  of  art  because  they  found 
it  interesting,  than  have  found  it  interesting  because 
it  is  a  work  of  art.  It  is  the  "Mona  Lisa"  of 
literature. 

The  grounds  of  Hamlefs  failure  are  not 
immediately  obvious.  Mr.  Robertson  is  undoubtedly 
correct  in  concluding  that  the  essential  emotion  of 
the  play  is  the  feeling  of  a  son  towards  a  guilty 
mother : 

[Hamlet's]  tone  is  that  of  one  who  has  suffered 
tortures  on  the  score  of  his  mother's  degradation.  .  .  . 
The  guilt  of  a  mother  is  an  almost  intolerable 
motive  for  drama,  but  it  had  to  be  maintained  and 
emphasized  to  supply  a  psychological  solution,  or 
rather  a  hint  of  one. 

This,  however,  is  by  no  means  the  whole  story.  It  is 
not  merely  the  "  guilt  of  a  mother "  that  cannot  be 
handled  as  Shakespeare  handled  the  suspicion  of 
Othello,  the  infatuation  of  Antony,  or  the  pride  of 
Coriolanus.  The  subject  might  conceivably  have 
expanded  into  a  tragedy  like  these,  intelligible, 
self-complete,  in  the  sunlight.  Hamlet,  like  the 
sonnets,  is  full  of  some  stuff  that  the  writer  could  not 
drag  to  light,  contemplate,  or  manipulate  into  art. 
And  when  we  search  for  this  feeling,  we  find  it,  as  in 
the  sonnets,  very  difficult  to  localize.  You  cannot 
point  to  it  in  the  speeches ;  indeed,  if  you  examine 
the  two  famous  soliloquies  you  see  the  versification  of 
Shakespeare,  but  a  content  which  might  be  claimed 
91 


The  Sacred  Wood 

by  another,  perhaps  by  the  author  of  the  Revenge  of 
Bussy  d'AmboiS)  Act  v.  sc.  i.  We  find  Shakespeare's 
Hamlet  not  in  the  action,  not  in  any  quotations 
that  we  might  select,  so  much  as  in  an  unmistakable 
tone  which  is  unmistakably  not  in  the  earlier  play. 

The  only  way  of  expressing  emotion  in  the  form  of 
art  is  by  finding  an  "  objective  correlative  " ;  in  other 
words,  a  set  of  objects,  a  situation,  a  chain  of  events 
which  shall  be  the  formula  of  that  particular  emotion ; 
such  that  when  the  external  facts,  which  must  ter- 
minate in  sensory  experience,  are  given,  the  emotion 
is  immediately  evoked.  If  you  examine  any  of 
Shakespeare's  more  successful  tragedies,  you  will  find 
this  exact  equivalence ;  you  will  find  that  the  state  of 
mind  of  Lady  Macbeth  walking  in  her  sleep  has  been 
communicated  to  you  by  a  skilful  accumulation  of 
imagined  sensory  impressions ;  the  words  of  Macbeth 
on  hearing  of  his  wife's  death  strike  us  as  if,  given  the 
sequence  of  events,  these  words  were  automatically 
released  by  the  last  event  in  the  series.  The  artistic 
"  inevitability  "  lies  in  this  complete  adequacy  of  the 
external  to  the  emotion ;  and  this  is  precisely  what  is 
deficient  in  Hamlet.  Hamlet  (the  man)  is  domin- 
ated by  an  emotion  which  is  inexpressible,  because  it 
is  in  excess  of  the  facts  as  they  appear.  And  the 
supposed  identity  of  Hamlet  with  his  author  is 
genuine  to  this  point :  that  Hamlet's  bafflement  at  the 
absence  of  objective  equivalent  to  his  feelings  is  a 
prolongation  of  the  bafflement  of  his  creator  in  the  face 
of  his  artistic  problem.  Hamlet  is  up  against  the 
difficulty  that  his  disgust  is  occasioned  by  his  mother, 
but  that  his  mother  is  not  an  adequate  equivalent  for 
it ;  his  disgust  envelops  and  exceeds  her.  It  is  thus 
92 


Hamlet  and  His  Problems 

a  feeling  which  he  cannot  understand;  he  cannot 
objectify  it,  and  it  therefore  remains  to  poison  life  and 
obstruct  action.  None  of  the  possible  actions  can 
satisfy  it ;  and  nothing  that  Shakespeare  can  do  with 
the  plot  can  express  Hamlet  for  him.  And  it  must  be 
noticed  that  the  very  nature  of  the  donn'ees  of  the 
problem  precludes  objective  equivalence.  To  have 
heightened  the  criminality  of  Gertrude  would  have 
been  to  provide  the  formula  for  a  totally  different 
emotion  in  Hamlet;  it  is  just  because  her  character 
is  so  negative  and  insignificant  that  she  arouses  in 
Hamlet  the  feeling  which  she  is  incapable  of  repre- 
senting. 

The  "madness"  of  Hamlet  lay  to  Shakespeare's 

hand ;  in  the  earlier  play  a  simple  ruse,  and  to  the 

end,  we  may  presume,  understood  as  a  ruse  by  the 

audience.     For  Shakespeare  it  is  less  than  madness 

and  more  than  feigned.     The  levity  of  Hamlet,  his 

repetition   of  phrase,   his  puns,   are  not   part   of  a 

deliberate    plan    of   dissimulation,   but    a    form    of 

emotional  relief.     In  the  character  Hamlet  it  is  the 

buffoonery  of  an  emotion  which  can  find  no  outlet 

in  action ;  in  the  dramatist  it  is  the  buffoonery  of  an 

emotion  which  he  cannot  express  in  art.     The  intense 

feeling,   ecstatic    or  terrible,   without   an   object   or 

exceeding  its  object,  is  something  which  every  person 

of  sensibility  has  known;  it  is  doubtless  a  study  to 

pathologists.     It  often   occurs   in   adolescence:   the 

ordinary  person  puts  these  feelings  to  sleep,  or  trims 

down  his  feeling  to  fit  the  business  world ;  the  artist 

keeps  it   alive  by  his   ability  to  intensify  the   world 

to  his  emotions.     The  Hamlet  of  Laforgue  is  an 

adolescent ;  the  Hamlet  of  Shakespeare  is  not,  he  has 

93 


The  Sacred  Wood 

not  that  explanation  and  excuse.  We  must  simply 
admit  that  here  Shakespeare  tackled  a  problem  which 
proved  too  much  for  him.  Why  he  attempted  it  at 
all  is  an  insoluble  puzzle ;  under  compulsion  of  what 
experience  he  attempted  to  express  the  inexpressibly 
horrible,  we  cannot  ever  know.  We  need  a  great 
many  facts  in  his  biography ;  and  we  should  like  to 
know  whether,  and  when,  and  after  or  at  the  same 
time  as  what  personal  experience,  he  read  Montaigne, 
n.  xii.,  Apologie  de  Raimond  Sebond.  We  should 
have,  finally,  to  know  something  which  is  by 
hypothesis  unknowable,  for  we  assume  it  to  be  an 
experience  which,  in  the  manner  indicated,  exceeded 
the  facts.  We  should  have  to  understand  things 
which  Shakespeare  did  not  understand  himself. 


94 


Ben  Jonson  *>       *>       o       o       o 

THE  reputation  of  Jonson  has  been  of  the 
most  deadly  kind  that  can  be  compelled  upon 
the  memory  of  a  great  poet.  To  be  universally  ac- 
cepted ;  to  be  damned  by  the  praise  that  quenches 
all  desire  to  read  the  book;  to  be  afflicted  by  the 
imputation  of  the  virtues  which  excite  the  least 
pleasure ;  and  to  be  read  only  by  historians  and  anti- 
quaries— this  is  the  most  perfect  conspiracy  of  ap- 
proval. For  some  generations  the  reputation  of 
Jonson  has  been  carried  rather  as  a  liability  than  as 
an  asset  in  the  balance-sheet  of  English  literature. 
No  critic  has  succeeded  in  making  him  appear 
pleasurable  or  even  interesting.  Swinburne's  book  on 
Jonson  satisfies  no  curiosity  and  stimulates  no 
thought.  For  the  critical  study  in  the  "Men  of 
Letters  Series"  by  Mr.  Gregory  Smith  there  is  a 
place;  it  satisfies  curiosity,  it  supplies  many  just 
observations,  it  provides  valuable  matter  on  the 
neglected  masques ;  it  only  fails  to  remodel  the  image 
of  Jonson  which  is  settled  in  our  minds.  Probably 
the  fault  lies  with  several  generations  of  our  poets.  It 
is  not  that  the  value  of  poetry  is  only  its  value  to 
living  poets  for  their  own  work ;  but  appreciation  is 
akin  to  creation,  and  true  enjoyment  of  poetry  is 
related  to  the  stirring  of  suggestion,  the  stimulus  that 
95 


The  Sacred  Wood 

a  poet  feels  in  his  enjoyment  of  other  poetry.  Jonson 
has  provided  no  creative  stimulus  for  a  very  long  time ; 
consequently  we  must  look  back  as  far  as  Dryden — 
precisely,  a  poetic  practitioner  who  learned  from  Jonson 
— before  we  find  a  living  criticism  of  Jonson's  work. 

Yet  there  are  possibilities  for  Jonson  even  now. 
We  have  no  difficulty  in  seeing  what  brought  him  to 
this  pass;  how,  in  contrast,  not  with  Shakespeare, 
but  with  Marlowe,  Webster,  Donne,  Beaumont,  and 
Fletcher,  he  has  been  paid  out  with  reputation  instead 
of  enjoyment.  He  is  no  less  a  poet  than  these  men, 
but  his  poetry  is  of  the  surface.  Poetry  of  the  surface 
cannot  be  understood  without  study;  for  to  deal 
with  the  surface  of  life,  as  Jonson  dealt  with  it,  is  to 
deal  so  deliberately  that  we  too  must  be  deliberate, 
in  order  to  understand.  Shakespeare,  and  smaller 
men  also,  are  in  the  end  more  difficult,  but  they  offer 
something  at  the  start  to  encourage  the  student  or  to 
satisfy  those  who  want  nothing  more;  they  are 
suggestive,  evocative,  a  phrase,  a  voice;  they  offer 
poetry  in  detail  as  well  as  in  design.  So  does  Dante 
offer  something,  a  phrase  everywhere  (tu  se'  ombra  ed 
ombra  vedi)  even  to  readers  who  have  no  Italian ;  and 
Dante  and  Shakespeare  have  poetry  of  design  as  well 
as  of  detail.  But  the  polished  veneer  of  Jonson 
reflects  only  the  lazy  reader's  fatuity;  unconscious 
does  not  respond  to  unconscious ;  no  swarms  of  in- 
articulate feelings  are  aroused.  The  immediate 
appeal  of  Jonson  is  to  the  mind ;  his  emotional  tone 
is  not  in  the  single  verse,  but  in  the  design  of  the 
whole.  But  not  many  people  are  capable  of  discover- 
ing for  themselves  the  beauty  which  is  only  found 
after  labour;  and  Jonson's  industrious  readers  have 

96 


Ben  Jonson 

been  those  whose  interest  was  historical  and  curious, 
and  those  who  have  thought  that  in  discovering  the 
historical  and  curious  interest  they  had  discovered  the 
artistic  value  as  well.  When  we  say  that  Jonson 
requires  study,  we  do  not  mean  study  of  his  classical 
scholarship  or  of  seventeenth-century  manners.  We 
mean  intelligent  saturation  in  his  work  as  a  whole ; 
we  mean  that  in  order  to  enjoy  him  at  all,  we  must 
get  to  the  centre  of  his  work  and  his  temperament, 
and  that  we  must  see  him  unbiased  by  time,  as  a 
contemporary.  And  to  see  him  as  a  contemporary 
does  not  so  much  require  the  power  of  putting  our- 
selves into  seventeenth-century  London  as  it  requires 
the  power  of  setting  Jonson  in  our  London  :  a  more 
difficult  triumph  of  divination. 

It  is  generally  conceded  that  Jonson  failed  as  a 
tragic  dramatist;  and  it  is  usually  agreed  that  he 
failed  because  his  genius  was  for  satiric  comedy  and 
because  of  the  weight  of  pedantic  learning  with  which 
he  burdened  his  two  tragic  failures.  The  second 
point  marks  an  obvious  error  of  detail ;  the  first  is 
too  crude  a  statement  to  be  accepted ;  to  say  that  he 
failed  because  his  genius  was  unsuited  to  tragedy  is 
to  tell  us  nothing  at  all.  Jonson  did  not  write  a 
good  tragedy,  but  we  can  see  no  reason  why  he  should 
not  have  written  one.  If  two  plays  so  different 
as  The  Tempest  and  The  Silent  Woman  are  both 
comedies,  surely  the  category  of  tragedy  could  be 
made  wide  enough  to  include  something  possible  for 
Jonson  to  have  done.  But  the  classification  of 
tragedy  and  comedy,  while  it  may  be  sufficient  to 
mark  the  distinction  in  a  dramatic  literature  of  more 
rigid  form  and  treatment — it  may  distinguish  Aristo- 
G  97 


The  Sacred  Wood 

phanes  from  Euripides — is  not  adequate  to  a  drama 
of  such  variations  as  the  Elizabethans.  Tragedy  is  a 
crude  classification  for  plays  so  different  in  their 
tone  as  Macbeth,  The  Jew  of  Malta,  and  The  Witch  of 
Edmonton  ;  and  it  does  not  help  us  much  to  say 
that  The  Merchant  of  Venice  and  The  Alchemist  are 
comedies.  Jonson  had  his  own  scale,  his  own  in- 
strument. The  merit  which  Catiline  possesses  is  the 
same  merit  that  is  exhibited  more  triumphantly  in 
Volpone  \  Catiline  fails,  not  because  it  is  too  laboured 
and  conscious,  but  because  it  is  not  conscious 
enough;  because  Jonson  in  this  play  was  not  alert 
to  his  own  idiom,  not  clear  in  his  mind  as  to  what 
his  temperament  wanted  him  to  do.  In  Catiline 
Jonson  conforms,  or  attemps  to  conform,  to  con- 
ventions ;  not  to  the  conventions  of  antiquity,  which 
he  had  exquisitely  under  control,  but  to  the  con- 
ventions of  tragico-historical  drama  of  his  time.  It 
is  not  the  Latin  erudition  that  sinks  Catiline,  but 
the  application  of  that  erudition  to  a  form  which  was 
not  the  proper  vehicle  for  the  mind  which  had 
amassed  the  erudition. 

If  you  look  at  Catiline — that  dreary  Pyrrhic  victory 
of  tragedy — you  find  two  passages  to  be  successful : 
Act  ii.  scene  i,  the  dialogue  of  the  political  ladies, 
and  the  Prologue  of  Sylla's  ghost.  These  two 
passages  are  genial.  The  soliloquy  of  the  ghost 
is  a  characteristic  Jonson  success  in  content  and  in 
versification — 

Dost  thou  not  feel  me,  Rome  ?  not  yet !  is  night 

So  heavy  on  thee,  and  my  weight  so  light? 

Can  Sylla's  ghost  arise  within  thy  walls, 

Less  threatening^than  an  earthquake,  the'quick  falls 

98 


Ben  Jonson 

Of  thee  and  thine  ?    Shake  not  the  frighted  heads 

Of  thy  steep  towers,  or  shrink  to  their  first  beds? 

Or  as  their  ruin  the  large  Tyber  fills. 

Make  that  swell  up,  and  drown  thy  seven  proud  hills?  .  .  . 

This  is  the  learned,  but  also  the  creative,  Jonson. 
Without  concerning  himself  with  the  character  of 
Sulla,  and  in  lines  of  invective,  Jonson  makes  Sylla's 
ghost,  while  the  words  are  spoken,  a  living  and 
terrible  force.  The  words  fall  with  as  determined 
beat  as  if  they  were  the  will  of  the  morose  Dictator 
himself.  You  may  say :  merely  invective ;  but  mere 
invective,  even  if  as  superior  to  the  clumsy  fisticuffs 
of  Marston  and  Hall  as  Jonson's  verse  is  superior  to 
theirs,  would  not  create  a  living  figure  as  Jonson  has 
done  in  this  long  tirade.  And  you  may  say  :  rhetoric ; 
but  if  we  are  to  call  it  "rhetoric"  we  must  subject 
that  term  to  a  closer  dissection  than  any  to  which  it 
is  accustomed.  What  Jonson  has  done  here  is  not 
merely  a  fine  speech.  It  is  the  careful,  precise  filling 
in  of  a  strong  and  simple  outline,  and  at  no  point 
does  it  overflow  the  outline ;  it  is  far  more  careful  and 
precise  in  its  obedience  to  this  outline  than  are  many 
of  the  speeches  in  Tamburlainc.  The  outline  is  not 
Sulla,  for  Sulla  has  nothing  to  do  with  it,  but  "  Sylla's 
ghost."  The  words  may  not  be  suitable  to  an 
historical  Sulla,  or  to  anybody  in  history,  but  they 
are  a  perfect  expression  for  "Sylla's  ghost."  You 
cannot  say  they  are  rhetorical  "because  people  do 
not  talk  like  that,"  you  cannot  call  them  "verbi- 
age " ;  they  do  not  exhibit  prolixity  or  redundancy  or 
the  other  vices  in  the  rhetoric  books;  there  is  a 
definite  artistic  emotion  which  demands  expression  at 
that  length.  The  words  themselves  are  mostly  simple 
90 


The  Sacred  Wood 

words,   the  syntax  is  natural,  the  language  austere 
rather  than  adorned.     Turning  then  to  the  induction 
of  The  Poetaster^  we  find  another  success  of  the  same 
kind- 
Light,  I  salute  thee,  but  with  wounded  nerves  .  .  . 

Men  may  not  talk  in  that  way,  but  the  spirit  of  envy 
does,  and  in  the  words  of  Jonson  envy  is  a  real  and 
living  person.  It  is  not  human  life  that  informs  envy 
and  Sylla's  ghost,  but  it  is  energy  of  which  human 
life  is  only  another  variety. 

Returning  to  Catiline^  we  find  that  the  best  scene 
in  the  body  of  the  play  is  one  which  cannot  be 
squeezed  into  a  tragic  frame,  and  which  appears  to 
belong  to  satiric  comedy.  The  scene  between  Fulvia 
and  Galla  and  Sempronia  is  a  living  scene  in  a 
wilderness  of  oratory.  And  as  it  recalls  other  scenes 
— there  is  a  suggestion  of  the  college  of  ladies  in  The 
Silent  Woman — it  looks  like  a  comedy  scene.  And  it 
appears  to  be  satire. 

They  shall  all  give  and  pay  well,  that  come  here, 

If  they  will  have  it ;  and  that,  jewels,  pearl, 

Plate,  or  round  sums  to  buy  these.     I'm  not  taken 

With  a  cob-swan  or  a  high-mounting  bull, 

As  foolish  Leda  and  Europa  were ; 

But  the  bright  gold,  with  Danae.     For  such  price 

I  would  endure  a  rough,  harsh  Jupiter, 

Or  ten  such  thundering  gamesters,  and  refrain 

To  laugh  at  'em,  till  they  are  gone,  with  my  much  suffering. 

This  scene  is  no  more  comedy  than  it  is  tragedy,  and 
the  "  satire "  is  merely  a  medium  for  the  essential 
emotion.  Jonson's  drama  is  only  incidentally  satire, 
because  it  is  only  incidentally  a  criticism  upon  the 
100 


Ben  Jonson 

actual  world.  It  is  not  satire  in  the  way  in  which 
the  work  of  Swift  or  the  work  of  Moliere  may  be 
called  satire :  that  is,  it  does  not  find  its  source  in 
any  precise  emotional  attitude  or  precise  intellectual 
criticism  of  the  actual  world.  It  is  satire  perhaps  as 
the  work  of  Rabelais  is  satire ;  certainly  not  more  so. 
The  important  thing  is  that  if  fiction  can  be  divided 
into  creative  fiction  and  critical  fiction,  Jonson's  is 
creative.  That  he  was  a  great  critic,  our  first  great 
critic,  does  not  affect  this  assertion.  Every  creator 
is  also  a  critic ;  Jonson  was  a  conscious  critic,  but  he 
was  also  conscious  in  his  creations.  Certainly,  one 
sense  in  which  the  term  "  critical  "  may  be  applied  to 
fiction  is  a  sense  in  which  the  term  might  be  used 
of  a  method  antithetical  to  Jonson's.  It  is  the 
method  of  Education  Sentimentale.  The  characters  of 
Jonson,  of  Shakespeare,  perhaps  of  all  the  greatest 
drama,  are  drawn  in  positive  and  simple  outlines. 
They  may  be  filled  in,  and  by  Shakespeare  they  are 
filled  in,  by  much  detail  or  many  shifting  aspects; 
but  a  clear  and  sharp  and  simple  form  remains 
through  these — though  it  would  be  hard  to  say  in 
what  the  clarity  and  sharpness  and  simplicity  of 
Hamlet  consists.  But  Fre'de'ric  Moreau  is  not  made 
in  that  way.  He  is  constructed  partly  by  negative 
definition,  built  up  by  a  great  number  of  observa- 
tions. We  cannot  isolate  him  from  the  environment 
in  which  we  find  him;  it  may  be  an  environment 
which  is  or  can  be  much  universalized ;  nevertheless 
it,  and  the  figure  in  it,  consist  of  very  many  observed 
particular  facts,  the  actual  world.  Without  this  world 
the  figure  dissolves.  The  ruling  faculty  is  a  critical 
perception,  a  commentary  upon  experienced  feeling 
101 


The  Sacred  Wood 

and  sensation.  If  this  is  true  of  Flaubert,  it  is  true 
in  a  higher  degree  of  Moliere  than  of  Jonson.  The 
broad  farcical  lines  of  Moliere  may  seem  to  be  the 
same  drawing  as  Jonson's.  But  Moliere — say  in 
Alceste  or  Monsieur  Jourdain — is  criticizing  the 
actual;  the  reference  to  the  actual  world  is  more 
direct.  And  having  a  more  tenuous  reference,  the 
work  of  Jonson  is  much  less  directly  satirical. 

This  leads  us  to  the  question  of  Humours. 
Largely  on  the  evidence  of  the  two  Humour  plays, 
it  is  sometimes  assumed  that  Jonson  is  occupied  with 
types ;  typical  exaggerations,  or  exaggerations  of  type. 
The  Humour  definition,  the  expressed  intention  of 
Jonson,  may  be  satisfactory  for  these  two  plays. 
Every  Man  in  his  Humour  is  the  first  mature  work 
of  Jonson,  and  the  student  of  Jonson  must  study  it ; 
but  it  is  not  the  play  in  which  Jonson  found  his 
genius  :  it  is  the  last  of  his  plays  to  read  first.  If  one 
reads  Volpone,  and  after  that  re-reads  the  Jew  of 
Malta ;  then  returns  to  Jonson  and  reads  Bartholomeiv 
Fair,  The  Alchemist,  Epicxne  and  The  Devil  is  an 
Ass,  and  finally  Catiline,  it  is  possible  to  arrive  at  a 
fair  opinion  of  the  poet  and  the  dramatist. 

The  Humour,  even  at  the  beginning,  is  not  a  type, 
as  in  Marston's  satire,  but  a  simplified  and  somewhat 
distorted  individual  with  a  typical  mania.  In  the 
later  work,  the  Humour  definition  quite  fails  to 
account  for  the  total  effect  produced.  The  characters 
of  Shakespeare  are  such  as  might  exist  in  different 
circumstances  than  those  in  which  Shakespeare  sets 
them.  The  latter  appear  to  be  those  which  extract 
from  the  characters  the  most  intense  and  interesting 
realization;  but  that  realization  has  not  exhausted 
I O2 


Ben  Jonson 

their  possibilities.  Volpone's  life,  on  the  other  hand, 
is  bounded  by  the  scene  in  which  it  is  played;  in 
fact,  the  life  is  the  life  of  the  scene  and  is  derivatively 
the  life  of  Volpone;  the  life  of  the  character  is 
inseparable  from  the  life  of  the  drama.  This  is  not 
dependence  upon  a  background,  or  upon  a  substratum 
of  fact.  The  emotional  effect  is  single  and  simple. 
Whereas  in  Shakespeare  the  effect  is  due  to  the  way 
in  which  the  characters  act  upon  one  another,  in 
Jonson  it  is  given  by  the  way  in  which  the  characters 
fit  in  with  each  other.  The  artistic  result  of  Volpone 
is  not  due  to  any  effect  that  Volpone,  Mosca, 
Corvino,  Corbaccio,  Voltore  have  upon  each  other, 
but  simply  to  their  combination  into  a  whole.  And 
these  figures  are  not  personifications  of  passions; 
separately,  they  have  not  even  that  reality,  they  are 
constituents.  It  is  a  similar  indication  of  Jonson's 
method  that  you  can  hardly  pick  out  a  line  of 
Jonson's  and  say  confidently  that  it  is  great  poetry ; 
but  there  are  many  extended  passages  to  which  you 
cannot  deny  that  honour. 

I  will  have  all  my  beds  blown  up,  not  stuft ; 
Down  is  too  hard  ;  and  then,  mine  oval  room 
Fill'd  with  such  pictures  as  Tiberius  took 
From  Elephantis,  and  dull  Aretine 
But  coldly  imitated.     Then,  my  glasses 
Cut  in  more  subtle  angles,  to  disperse 
And  multiply  the  figures,  as  I  walk.  .  .  . 

Jonson  is  the  legitimate  heir  of  Marlowe.     The 
man  who  wrote,  in  Volpone : 

for  thy  love, 

In  varying  figures,  I  would  have  contended 
With  the  blue  Proteus,  or  the  horned  flood.  .  .  . 
103 


The  Sacred  Wood 
and 

See,  a  carbuncle 

May  put  out  both  the  eyes  of  our  Saint  Mark ; 
A  diamond  would  have  bought  Lollia  Paulina, 
When  she  came  in  like  star-light,  hid  with  jewels.  .  .  . 

is  related  to  Marlowe  as  a  poet ;  and  if  Marlowe  is 
a  poet,  Jonson  is  also.  And,  if  Jonson's  comedy  is 
a  comedy  of  humours,  then  Marlowe's  tragedy,  a  large 
part  of  it,  is  a  tragedy  of  humours.  But  Jonson  has 
too  exclusively  been  considered  as  the  typical  repre- 
sentative of  a  point  of  view  toward  comedy.  He  has 
suffered  from  his  great  reputation  as  a  critic  and 
theorist,  from  the  effects  of  his  intelligence.  We 
have  been  taught  to  think  of  him  as  the  man,  the 
dictator  (confusedly  in  our  minds  with  his  later 
namesake),  as  the  literary  politician  impressing  his 
views  upon  a  generation;  we  are  offended  by 
the  constant  reminder  of  his  scholarship.  We 
forget  the  comedy  in  the  humours,  and  the  serious 
artist  in  the  scholar.  Jonson  has  suffered  in  public 
opinion,  as  anyone  must  suffer  who  is  forced  to  talk 
about  his  art. 

If  you  examine  the  first  hundred  lines  or  more  of 
Volpone  the  verse  appears  to  be  in  the  manner  of 
Marlowe,  more  deliberate,  more  mature,  but  without 
Marlowe's  inspiration.  It  looks  like  mere  "  rhetoric," 
certainly  not  "deeds  and  language  such  as  men  do 
use  " !  It  appears  to  us,  in  fact,  forced  and  flagitious 
bombast.  That  it  is  not  "  rhetoric,"  or  at  least  not 
vicious  rhetoric,  we  do  not  know  until  we  are  able 
to  review  the  whole  play.  For  the  consistent  main- 
tenance "of  this  manner  conveys  in  the  end  an  effect 
not  of  verbosity,  but  of  bold,  even  shocking  and 
104 


Ben  Jonson 

terrifying  directness.  We  have  difficulty  in  saying 
exactly  what  produces  this  simple  and  single  effect. 
It  is  not  in  any  ordinary  way  due  to  management  of 
intrigue.  Jonson  employs  immense  dramatic  con- 
structive skill :  it  is  not  so  much  skill  in  plot  as  skill 
in  doing  without  a  plot.  He  never  manipulates  as 
complicated  a  plot  as  that  of  The  Merchant  of  Venice ; 
he  has  in  his  best  plays  nothing  like  the  intrigue  of 
Restoration  comedy.  In  Bartholomew  Fair  it  is 
hardly  a  plot  at  all;  the  marvel  of  the  play  is  the 
bewildering  rapid  chaotic  action  of  the  fair ;  it  is  the 
fair  itself,  not  anything  that  happens  to  take  place 
in  the  fair.  In  Volpone,  or  The  Alchemist^  or  The 
Silent  Woman>  the  plot  is  enough  to  keep  the  players 
in  motion ;  it  is  rather  an  "  action  "  than  a  plot.  The 
plot  does  not  hold  the  play  together ;  what  holds  the 
play  together  is  a  unity  of  inspiration  that  radiates 
into  plot  and  personages  alike. 

We  have  attempted  to  make  more  precise  the  sense 
in  which  it  was  said  that  Jonson's  work  is  "of  the 
surface  " ;  carefully  avoiding  the  word  "  superficial." 
For  there  is  work  contemporary  with  Jonson's  which 
is  superficial  in  a  pejorative  sense  in  which  the  word 
cannot  be  applied  to  Jonson — the  work  of  Beaumont 
and  Fletcher.  If  we  look  at  the  work  of  Jonson's 
great  contemporaries,  Shakespeare,  and  also  Donne 
and  Webster  and  Tourneur  (and  sometimes  Middleton), 
have  a  depth,  a  third  dimension,  as  Mr.  Gregory 
Smith  rightly  calls  it,  which  Jonson's  work  has  not. 
Their  words  have  often  a  network  of  tentacular  roots 
reaching  down  to  the  deepest  terrors  and  desires. 
Jonson's  most  certainly  have  not ;  but  in  Beaumont 
and  Fletcher  we  may  think  that  at  times  we  find  it. 
105 


The  Sacred  Wood 

Looking  closer,  we  discover  that  the  blossoms  of 
Beaumont  and  Fletcher's  imagination  draw  no  sus- 
tenance from  the  soil,  but  are  cut  and  slightly 
withered  flowers  stuck  into  sand. 

Wilt  thou,  hereafter,  when  they  talk  of  me, 

As  thou  shalt  hear  nothing  but  infamy, 

Remember  some  of  these  things?  .  .  . 

I  pray  thee,  do ;  for  thou  shalt  never  see  me  so  again. 

Hair  woven  in  many  a  curious  warp, 
Able  in  endless  error  to  enfold 
The  wandering  soul ;  .  .  . 

Detached  from  its  context,  this  looks  like  the  verse 
of  the  greater  poets ;  just  as  lines  of  Jonson,  detached 
from  their  context,  look  like  inflated  or  empty  fustian. 
But  the  evocative  quality  of  the  verse  of  Beaumont 
and  Fletcher  depends  upon  a  clever  appeal  to 
emotions  and  associations  which  they  have  not  them- 
selves grasped;  it  is  hollow.  It  is  superficial  with 
a  vacuum  behind  it;  the  superficies  of  Jonson  is 
solid.  It  is  what  it  is;  it  does  not  pretend  to  be 
another  thing.  But  it  is  so  very  conscious  and 
deliberate  that  we  must  look  with  eyes  alert  to  the 
whole  before  we  apprehend  the  significance  of  any 
part.  We  cannot  call  a  man's  work  superficial  when 
it  is  the  creation  of  a  world ;  a  man  cannot  be 
accused  of  dealing  superficially  with  the  world  which 
he  himself  has  created ;  the  superficies  is  the  world. 
Jonson's  characters  conform  to  the  logic  of  the 
emotions  of  their  world.  It  is  a  world  like  Lobat- 
chevsky's ;  the  worlds  created  by  artists  like  Jonson 
are  like  systems  of  non-Euclidean  geometry.  They 
are  not  fancy,  because  they  have  a  logic  of  their 
own ;  and  this  logic  illuminates  the  actual  world, 
106 


Ben  Jonson 

because  it  gives  us  a  new  point  of  view  from  which 
to  inspect  it. 

A  writer  of  power  and  intelligence,  Jonson  en- 
deavoured to  promulgate,  as  a  formula  and  programme 
of  reform,  what  he  chose  to  do  himself;  and  he  not 
unnaturally  laid  down  in  abstract  theory  what  is  in 
reality  a  personal  point  of  view.  And  it  is  in  the  end 
of  no  value  to  discuss  Jonson's  theory  and  practice 
unless  we  recognize  and  seize  this  point  of  view, 
which  escapes  the  formulae,  and  which  is  what  makes 
his  plays  worth  reading.  Jonson  behaved  as  the 
great  creative  mind  that  he  was :  he  created  his  own 
world,  a  world  from  which  his  followers,  as  well  as 
the  dramatists  who  were  trying  to  do  something 
wholly  different,  are  excluded.  Remembering  this, 
we  turn  to  Mr.  Gregory  Smith's  objection — that 
Jonson's  characters  lack  the  third  dimension,  have  no 
life  out  of  the  theatrical  existence  in  which  they 
appear — and  demand  an  inquest.  The  objection 
implies  that  the  characters  are  purely  the  work  of 
intellect,  or  the  result  of  superficial  observation  of 
a  world  which  is  faded  or  mildewed.  It  implies  that 
the  characters  are  lifeless.  But  if  we  dig  beneath  the 
theory,  beneath  the  observation,  beneath  the  deliberate 
drawing  and  the  theatrical  and  dramatic  elaboration, 
there  is  discovered  a  kind  of  power,  animating 
Volpone,  Busy,  Fitzdottrel,  the  literary  ladies  of 
Epiccene,  even  Bobadil,  which  comes  from  below 
the  intellect,  and  for  which  no  theory  of  humours 
will  account.  And  it  is  the  same  kind  of  power 
which  vivifies  Trimalchio,  and  Panurge,  and  some 
but  not  all  of  the  "comic"  characters  of  Dickens. 
The  fictive  life  of  this  kind  is  not  to  be  circum- 
107 


The  Sacred  Wood 

scribed  by  a  reference  to  "  comedy  "  or  to  "  farce  " ; 
it  is  not  exactly  the  kind  of  life  which  informs  the 
characters  of  Moliere  or  that  which  informs  those  of 
Marivaux — two  writers  who  were,  besides,  doing 
something  quite  different  the  one  from  the  other. 
But  it  is  something  which  distinguishes  Barabas  from 
Shylock,  Epicure  Mammon  from  Falstaff,  Faustus 
from — if  you  will — Macbeth ;  Marlowe  and  Jonson 
from  Shakespeare  and  the  Shakespearians,  Webster, 
and  Tourneur.  It  is  not  merely  Humours:  for 
neither  Volpone  nor  Mosca  is  a  humour.  No  theory 
of  humours  could  account  for  Jonson's  best  plays  or 
the  best  characters  in  them.  We  want  to  know  at 
what  point  the  comedy  of  humours  passes  into  a  work 
of  art,  and  why  Jonson  is  not  Brome. 

The  creation  of  a  work  of  art,  we  will  say  the  crea- 
tion of  a  character  in  a  drama,  consists  in  the  process 
of  transfusion  of  the  personality,  or,  in  a  deeper  sense, 
the  life,  of  the  author  into  the  character.  This  is  a 
very  different  matter  from  the  orthodox  creation  in 
one's  own  image.  The  ways  in  which  the  passions 
and  desires  of  the  creator  may  be  satisfied  in  the  work 
of  art  are  complex  and  devious.  In  a  painter  they 
may  take  the  form  of  a  predilection  for  certain  colours, 
tones,  or  lightings;  in  a  writer  the  original  impulse 
may  be  even  more  strangely  transmuted.  Now,  we 
may  say  with  Mr.  Gregory  Smith  that  Falstaff  or  a 
score  of  Shakespeare's  characters  have  a  "third 
dimension  "  that  Jonson's  have  not.  This  will  mean, 
not  that  Shakespeare's  spring  from  the  feelings  or 
imagination  and  Jonson's  from  the  intellect  or  inven- 
tion ;  they  have  equally  an  emotional  source ;  but  that 
Shakespeare's  represent  a  more  complex  tissue  of 
108 


Ben  Jonson 

feelings  and  desires,  as  well  as  a  more  supple,  a  more 
susceptible  temperament.  Falstaff  is  not  only  the 
roast  Malmesbury  ox  with  the  pudding  in  his  belly ; 
he  also  "  grows  old,"  and,  finally,  his  nose  is  as  sharp 
as  a  pen.  He  was  perhaps  the  satisfaction  of  more, 
and  of  more  complicated  feelings ;  and  perhaps  he  was, 
as  the  great  tragic  characters  must  have  been,  the  off- 
spring of  deeper,  less  apprehensible  feelings :  deeper, 
but  not  necessarily  stronger  or  more  intense,  than 
those  of  Jonson.  It  is  obvious  that  the  spring  of  the 
difference  is  not  the  difference  between  feeling  and 
thought,  or  superior  insight,  superior  perception,  on  the 
part  of  Shakespeare,  but  his  susceptibility  to  a  greater 
range  of  emotion,  and  emotion  deeper  and  more 
obscure.  But  his  characters  are  no  more  "  alive " 
than  are  the  characters  of  Jonson. 

The  world  they  live  in  is  a  larger  one.  But  small 
worlds — the  worlds  which  artists  create — do  not  differ 
only  in  magnitude ;  if  they  are  complete  worlds,  drawn 
to  scale  in  every  part,  they  differ  in  kind  also.  And 
Jonson's  world  has  this  scale.  His  type  of  personality 
found  its  relief  in  something  falling  under  the  category 
of  burlesque  or  farce — though  when  you  are  dealing 
with  a  unique  world,  like  his,  these  terms  fail  to 
appease  the  desire  for  definition.  It  is  not,  at  all 
events,  the  farce  of  Moliere:  the  latter  is  more 
analytic,  more  an  intellectual  redistribution.  It  is 
not  defined  by  the  word  "  satire."  Jonson  poses  as  a 
satirist.  But  satire  like  Jonson's  is  great  in  the  end 
not  by  hitting  off  its  object,  but  by  creating  it ;  the 
satire  is  merely  the  means  which  leads  to  the  aesthetic 
result,  the  impulse  which  projects  a  new  world  into  a 
new  orbit.  In  Every  Man  in  his  Humour  there  is 
109 


The  Sacred  Wood 

a  neat,  a  very  neat,  comedy  of  humours.  In  dis- 
covering and  proclaiming  in  this  play  the  new  genre 
Jonson  was  simply  recognizing,  unconsciously,  the 
route  which  opened  out  in  the  proper  direction  for 
his  instincts.  His  characters  are  and  remain,  like 
Marlowe's,  simplified  characters;  but  the  simplification 
does  not  consist  in  the  dominance  of  a  particular 
humour  or  monomania.  That  is  a  very  superficial 
account  of  it.  The  simplification  consists  largely  in 
reduction  of  detail,  in  the  seizing  of  aspects  relevant  to 
the  relief  of  an  emotional  impulse  which  remains  the 
same  for  that  character,  in  making  the  character 
conform  to  a  particular  setting.  This  stripping  is 
essential  to  the  art,  to  which  is  also  essential  a  flat 
distortion  in  the  drawing ;  it  is  an  art  of  caricature,  of 
great  caricature,  like  Marlowe's.  It  is  a  great  carica- 
ture, which  is  beautiful ;  and  a  great  humour,  which  is 
serious.  The  "  world  "  of  Jonson  is  sufficiently  large ; 
it  is  a  world  of  poetic  imagination  ;  it  is  sombre.  He 
did  not  get  the  third  dimension,  but  he  was  not 
trying  to  get  it. 

If  we  approach  Jonson  with  less  frozen  awe  of  his 
learning,  with  a  clearer  understanding  of  his  "  rhetoric  " 
and  its  applications,  if  we  grasp  the  fact  that  the 
knowledge  required  of  the  reader  is  not  archaeology 
but  knowledge  of  Jonson,  we  can  derive  not  only 
instruction  in  non  Euclidean  humanity — but  enjoy- 
ment. We  can  even  apply  him,  be  aware  of  him  as  a 
part  of  our  literary  inheritance  craving  further  expres- 
sion. Of  all  the  dramatists  of  his  time,  Jonson  is 
probably  the  one  whom  the  present  age  would  find  the 
most  sympathetic,  if  it  knew  him.  There  is  a  brutality, 
a  lack  of  sentiment,  a  polished  surface,  a  handling  of 
IIO 


Ben  Jonson 

large  bold  designs  in  brilliant  colours,  which  ought  to 
attract  about  three  thousand  people  in  London  and 
elsewhere.  At  least,  if  we  had  a  contemporary 
Shakespeare  and  a  contemporary  Jonson,  it  would  be 
the  Jonson  who  would  arouse  the  enthusiasm  of  the 
intelligentsia!  Though  he  is  saturated  in  literature, 
he  never  sacrifices  the  theatrical  qualities — theatrical 
in  the  most  favourable  sense — to  literature  or  to  the 
study  of  character.  His  work  is  a  titanic  show.  But 
Jonson's  masques,  an  important  part  of  his  work,  are 
neglected ;  our  flaccid  culture  lets  shows  and  literature 
fade,  but  prefers  faded  literature  to  faded  shows. 
There  are  hundreds  of  people  who  have  read  Comus 
to  ten  who  have  read  the  Masque  of  Blackness.  Comus 
contains  fine  poetry,  and  poetry  exemplifying  some 
merits  to  which  Jonson's  masque  poetry  cannot 
pretend.  Nevertheless,  Comus  is  the  death  of  the 
masque ;  it  is  the  transition  of  a  form  of  art — even  of 
a  form  which  existed  for  but  a  short  generation — into 
"  literature,"  literature  cast  in  a  form  which  has  lost 
its  application.  Even  though  Comus  was  a  masque  at 
Ludlow  Castle,  Jonson  had,  what  Milton  came  per- 
haps too  late  to  have,  a  sense  for  living  art ;  his  art 
was  applied.  The  masques  can  still  be  read,  and  with 
pleasure,  by  anyone  who  will  take  the  trouble — a 
trouble  which  in  this  part  of  Jonson  is,  indeed,  a  study 
of  antiquities— to  imagine  them  in  action,  displayed 
with  the  music,  costume,  dances,  and  the  scenery  of 
Inigo  Jones.  They  are  additional  evidence  that 
Jonson  had  a  fine  sense  of  form,  of  the  purpose  for 
which  a  particular  form  is  intended;  evidence  that 
he  was  a  literary  artist  even  more  than  he  was 
of  letters. 

Ill 


Philip  Massinger 


MASSINGER  has  been  more  fortunately  and 
more  fairly  judged  than  several  of  his  greater 
contemporaries.  Three  critics  have  done  their  best 
by  him  :  the  notes  of  Coleridge  exemplify  Coleridge's 
fragmentary  and  fine  perceptions ;  the  essay  of  Leslie 
Stephen  is  a  piece  of  formidable  destructive  analysis ; 
and  the  essay  of  Swinburne  is  Swinburne's  criticism 
at  its  best.  None  of  these,  probably,  has  put 
Massinger  finally  and  irrefutably  into  a  place. 

English  criticism  is  inclined  to  argue  or  persuade 
rather  than  to  state;  and,  instead  of  forcing  the 
subject  to  expose  himself,  these  critics  have  left  in 
their  work  an  undissolved  residuum  of  their  own  good 
taste,  which,  however  impeccable,  is  something  that 
requires  our  faith.  The  principles  which  animate 
this  taste  remain  unexplained.  Mr.  Cruickshank's 
book  is  a  work  of  scholarship  ;  and  the  advantage  of 
good  scholarship  is  that  it  presents  us  with  evidence 
which  is  an  invitation  to  the  critical  faculty  of  the 
reader:  its  bestows  a  method,  rather  than  a  judg- 
ment. 

It  is  difficult — it  is  perhaps  the  supreme  difficulty 
of  criticism — to  make  the  facts  generalize  themselves ; 
but  Mr.  Cruickshank  at  least  presents  us  with  facts 


Philip  Massinger 

which  are  capable  of  generalization.  This  is  a  service 
of  value ;  and  it  is  therefore  wholly  a  compliment  to 
the  author  to  say  that  his  appendices  are  as  valuable 
as  the  essay  itself. 

The  sort  of  labour  to  which  Mr.  Cruickshank  has 
devoted  himself  is  one  that  professed  critics  ought 
more  willingly  to  undertake.  It  is  an  important  part 
of  criticism,  more  important  than  any  mere  expres- 
sion of  opinion.  To  understand  Elizabethan  drama 
it  is  necessary  to  study  a  dozen  playwrights  at  once, 
to  dissect  with  all  care  the  complex  growth,  to  ponder 
collaboration  to  the  utmost  line.  Reading  Shake- 
speare and  several  of  his  contemporaries  is  pleasure 
enough,  perhaps  all  the  pleasure  possible,  for  most. 
But  if  we  wish  to  consummate  and  refine  this  pleasure 
by  understanding  it,  to  distil  the  last  drop  of  it,  to 
press  and  press  the  essence  of  each  author,  to  apply 
exact  measurement  to  our  own  sensations,  then  we 
must  compare;  and  we  cannot  compare  without 
parcelling  the  threads  of  authorship  and  influence. 
We  must  employ  Mr.  Cruickshank's  method  to 
examine  Mr.  Cruickshank's  judgments ;  and  perhaps 
the  most  important  judgment  to  which  he  has  com- 
mitted himself  is  this  : — 

Massinger,  in  his  grasp  of  stagecraft,  his  flexible 
metre,  his  desire  in  the  sphere  of  ethics  to  exploit 
both  vice  and  virtue,  is  typical  of  an  age  which  had 
much  culture,  but  which,  without  being  exactly 
corrupt,  lacked  moral  fibre. 

Here,  in  fact,  is  our  text :  to  elucidate  this  sentence 
would   be  to    account    for   Massinger.      We   begin 
vaguely   with    good    taste,   by    a    recognition    that 
H  113 


The  Sacred  Wood 

Massinger  is  inferior:  can  we  trace  this  inferiority, 
dissolve  it,  and  have  left  any  element  of  merit  ? 

We  turn  first  to  the  parallel  quotations  from  Massinger 
and  Shakespeare  collocated  by  Mr.  Cruickshank 
to  make  manifest  Massinger's  indebtedness.  One  of 
the  surest  of  tests  is  the  way  in  which  a  poet  borrows. 
Immature  poets  imitate  ;  mature  poets  steal ;  bad 
poets  deface  what  they  take,  and  good  poets  make  it 
into  something  better,  or  at  least  something  different. 
The  good  poet  welds  his  theft  into  a  whole  of  feeling 
which  is  unique,  utterly  different  from  that  from  which 
it  was  torn;  the  bad  poet  throws  it  into  something 
which  has  no  cohesion.  A  good  poet  will  usually 
borrow  from, authors  remote  in  time,  or  alien  in 
language,  or  diverse  in  interest.  Chapman  borrowed 
from  Seneca ;  Shakespeare  and  Webster  from  Mon- 
taigne. The  two  great  followers  of  Shakespeare, 
Webster  and  Tourneur,  in  their  mature  work  do  not 
borrow  from  him ;  he  is  too  close  to  them  to  be  of 
use  to  them  in  this  way.  Massinger,  as  Mr.  Cruick- 
shank shows,  borrows  from  Shakespeare  a  good  deal. 
Let  us  profit  by  some  of  the  quotations  with  which  he 
has  provided  us — 

Massinger :  Can  I  call  back  yesterday,  with  all  their  aids 
That  bow  unto  my  sceptre?  or  restore 
My  mind  to  that  tranquillity  and  peace 
It  then  enjoyed  ? 

Shakespeare'.  Not  poppy,  nor  mandragora, 

Nor  all  the  drowsy  syrops  of  the  world 
Shall  ever  medecine  thee  to  that  sweet  sleep 
Which  thou  owedst  yesterday. 

Massinger's    is   a   general    rhetorical    question,   the 

language  just  and  pure,  but  colourless.     Shakespeare's 

114 


Philip  Massinger 

has  particular  significance;  and  the  adjective 
"  drowsy  "  and  the  verb  "  medecine  "  infuse  a  precise 
vigour.  This  is,  on  Massinger's  part,  an  echo  rather 
than  an  imitation  or  a  plagiarism — the  basest,  because 
least  conscious  form  of  borrowing.  "  Drowsy  syrop  " 
is  a  condensation  of  meaning  frequent  in  Shakespeare, 
but  rare  in  Massinger. 

Massinger :  Thou  didst  not  borrow  of  Vice  her  indirect, 
Crooked,  and  abject  means. 

Shakespeare:  God  knows,  my  son, 

By  what  by-paths  and  indirect  crook'd  ways 
I  met  this  crown. 

Here,  again,  Massinger  gives  the  general  forensic 
statement,  Shakespeare  the  particular  image.  "In- 
direct crook'd"  is  forceful  in  Shakespeare;  a  mere 
pleonasm  in  Massinger.  "  Crook'd  ways "  is  a 
metaphor ;  Massinger's  phrase  only  the  ghost  of  a 
metaphor. 

Massinger :  And  now,  in  the  evening, 

When  thou  shoud'st  pass  with  honour  to  thy  rest, 
Wilt  thou  fall  like  a  meteor? 

Shakespeare'.  I  shall  fall 

Like  a  bright  exhalation  in  the  evening, 
And  no  man  see  me  more. 

Here  the  lines  of  Massinger  have  their  own  beauty. 
Still,  a  "  bright  exhalation  "  appears  to  the  eye  and 
makes  us  catch  our  breath  in  the  evening ;  "  meteor  " 
is  a  dim  simile ;  the  word  is  worn. 

Massinger'.  What  you  deliver  to  me  shall  be  lock'd  up 
In  a  strong  cabinet,  of  which  you  yourself 
Shall  keep  the  key. 

"5 


The  Sacred  Wood 

Shakespeare :  'Tis  in  my  memory  locked, 

And  you  yourself  shall  keep  the  key  of  it. 

In  the  preceding  passage  Massinger  had  squeezed 
his  simile  to  death,  here  he  drags  it  round  the  city 
at  his  heels ;  and  how  swift  Shakespeare's  figure  is ! 
We  may  add  two  more  passages,  not  given  by  our 
commentator;  here  the  model  is  Webster.  They 
occur  on  the  same  page,  an  artless  confession. 

Here  he  comes, 
His  nose  held  up  ;  he  hath  something  in  the  wind, 

is  hardly  comparable  to  "the  Cardinal  lifts  up  his 
nose  like  a  foul  porpoise  before  a  storm,"  and  when 
we  come  upon 

as  tann'd  galley-slaves 
Pay  such  as  do  redeem  them  from  the  oar 

it  is  unnecessary  to  turn  up  the  great  lines  in  the 
Duchess  of  Malfi.  Massinger  fancied  this  galley- 
slave  ;  for  he  comes  with  his  oar  again  in  the  Bond- 
man— 

Never  did  galley-slave  shake  off  his  chains, 

Or  looked  on  his  redemption  from  the  oar.  .  .  . 

Now  these  are  mature  plays ;  and  the  Roman  Actor 
(from  which  we  have  drawn  the  two  previous  extracts) 
is  said  to  have  been  the  preferred  play  of  its  author. 

We  may  conclude  directly  from  these  quotations 
that  Massinger's  feeling  for  language  had  outstripped 
his  feeling  for  things ;  that  his  eye  and  his  vocabulary 
were  not  in  close  co-operation.  One  of  the  greatest 
distinctions  of  several  of  his  elder  contemporaries — 
we  name  Middleton,  Webster,  Tourneur — is  a  gift 
116 


Philip  Massinger 

for  combining,  for  fusing  into  a  single  phrase,  two 
or  more  diverse  impressions. 

....  in  her  strong  toil  of  grace 

of  Shakespeare  is  such  a  fusion;  the  metaphor 
identifies  itself  with  what  suggests  it ;  the  resultant 
is  one  and  is  unique  — 

Does  the  silk  worm  expend  her  yellow  labours  ?  .  .  . 
Why  does  yon  fellow  falsify  highways 
And  lays  his  life  between  the  judge's  lips 
To  refine  such  a  one?  keeps  horse  and  men 
To  beat  their  valours  for  her? 

Let  the  common  sewer  take  it  from  distinction.  .  .  . 
Lust  and  forgetfulness  have  been  amongst  us.  ... 

These  lines  of  Tourneur  and  of  Middleton  exhibit 
that  perpetual  slight  alteration  of  language,  words 
perpetually  juxtaposed  in  new  and  sudden  com- 
binations, meanings  perpetually  eingeschachtelt  into 
meanings,  which  evidences  a  very  high  development 
of  the  senses,  a  development  of  the  English  language 
which  we  have  perhaps  never  equalled.  And,  indeed, 
with  the  end  of  Chapman,  Middleton,  Webster, 
Tourneur,  Donne  we  end  a  period  when  the  intellect 
was  immediately  at  the  tips  of  the  senses.  Sensation 
became  word  and  the  word  was  sensation.  The  next 
period  is  the  period  of  Milton  (though  still  with  a 
Marvell  in  it);  and  this  period  is  initiated  by 
Massinger. 

It  is  not  that  the  word  becomes  less  exact. 
Massinger  is,  in  a  wholly  eulogistic  sense,  choice  and 
correct.  And  the  decay  of  the  senses  is  not  incon- 
sistent with  a  greater  sophistication  of  language. 
But  every  vital  development  in  language  is  a 
117 


The  Sacred  Wood 

development  of  feeling  as  well.  The  verse  of 
Shakespeare  and  the  major  Shakespearian  dramatists 
is  an  innovation  of  this  kind,  a  true  mutation  of 
species.  The  verse  practised  by  Massinger  is  a 
different  verse  from  that  of  his  predecessors ;  but  it  is 
not  a  development  based  on,  or  resulting  from,  a  new 
way  of  feeling.  On  the  contrary,  it  seems  to  lead  us 
away  from  feeling  altogether. 

We  mean  that  Massinger  must  be  placed  as  much 
at  the  beginning  of  one  period  as  at  the  end  of 
another.  A  certain  Boyle,  quoted  by  Mr.  Cruick- 
shank,  says  that  Milton's  blank  verse  owes  much  to 
the  study  of  Massinger's. 

In  the  indefinable  touches  which  make  up  the 
music  of  a  verse  [says  Boyle],  in  the  artistic  distribu- 
tion of  pauses,  and  in  the  unerring  choice  and 
grouping  of  just  those  words  which  strike  the  ear  as 
the  perfection  of  harmony,  there  are,  if  we  leave 
Cyril  Tourneur's  Atheists  Tragedy  out  of  the  ques- 
tion, only  two  masters  in  the  drama,  Shakespeare 
in  his  latest  period  and  Massinger. 

This  Boyle  must  have  had  a  singular  ear   to  have 

preferred     Tourneur's  apprentice     work      to     his 

Revenger's  Tragedy ',  and  one  must  think  that  he  had 

never  glanced  at  Ford.  But  though  the  appraisal  be 

ludicrous,     the    praise  is     not    undeserved.     Mr. 

Cruickshank  has  given  us  an   excellent   example  of 
Massinger's  syntax  — 

What  though  my  father 

Writ  man  before  he  was  so,  and  confirm'd  it, 
By  numbering  that  day  no  part  of  his  life 
In  which  he  did  not  service  to  his  country ; 
Was  he  to  be  free  therefore  from  the  laws 
And  ceremonious  form  in  your  decrees? 

118 


Philip  Massinger 

Or  else  because  he  did  as  much  as  man 
In  those  three  memorable  overthrows, 
At  Granson,  Morat,  Nancy,  where  his  master, 
The  warlike  Charalois,  with  whose  misfortunes 
I  bear  his  name,  lost  treasure,  men,  and  life, 
To  be  excused  from  payment  of  those  sums 
Which  (his  own  patrimony  spent)  his  zeal 
To  serve  his  country  forced  him  to  take  up ! 

It  is  impossible  to  deny  the  masterly  construction  of 
this  passage ;  perhaps  there  is  not  one  living  poet  who 
could  do  the  like.  It  is  impossible  to  deny  the 
originality.  The  language  is  pure  and  correct,  free 
from  muddiness  or  turbidity.  Massinger  does  not 
confuse  metaphors,  or  heap  them  one  upon  another. 
He  is  lucid,  though  not  easy.  But  if  Massinger's  age, 
"without  being  exactly  corrupt,  lacks  moral  fibre," 
Massinger's  verse,  without  being  exactly  corrupt, 
suffers  from  cerebral  anaemia.  To  say  that  an 
involved  style  is  necessarily  a  bad  style  would  be 
preposterous.  But  such  a  style  should  follow  the 
involutions  of  a  mode  of  perceiving,  registering,  and 
digesting  impressions  which  is  also  involved.  It  is 
to  be  feared  that  the  feeling  of  Massinger  is  simple 
and  overlaid  with  received  ideas.  Had  Massinger 
had  a  nervous  system  as  refined  as  that  of  Middleton, 
Tourneur,  Webster,  or  Ford,  his  style  would  be  a 
triumph.  But  such  a  nature  was  not  at  hand,  and 
Massinger  precedes,  not  another  Shakespeare,  but 
Milton. 

Massinger  is,  in  fact,  at  a  further  remove  from 
Shakespeare  than  that  other  precursor  of  Milton — 
John  Fletcher.  Fletcher  was  above  all  an  opportunist, 
in  his  verse,  in  his  momentary  effects,  never  quite  a 
pastiche ;  in  his  structure  ready  to  sacrifice  everything 
119 


The  Sacred  Wood 

to  the  single  scene.  To  Fletcher,  because  he  was 
more  intelligent,  less  will  be  forgiven.  Fletcher  had 
a  cunning  guess  at  feelings,  and  betrayed  them; 
Massinger  was  unconscious  and  innocent.  As  an 
artisan  of  the  theatre  he  is  not  inferior  to  Fletcher, 
and  his  best  tragedies  have  an  honester  unity  than 
Bonduca.  But  the  unity  is  superficial.  In  the  Roman 
Actor  the  development  of  parts  is  out  of  all  proportion 
to  the  central  theme ;  in  the  Unnatural  Combat,  in 
spite  of  the  deft  handling  of  suspense  and  the  quick 
shift  from  climax  to  a  new  suspense,  the  first  part  of 
the  play  is  the  hatred  of  Malefort  for  his  son  and  the 
second  part  is  his  passion  for  his  daughter.  It  is 
theatrical  skill,  not  an  artistic  conscience  arranging 
emotions,  that  holds  the  two  parts  together.  In  the 
Duke  of  Milan  the  appearance  of  Sforza  at  the  Court 
of  his  conqueror  only  delays  the  action,  or  rather 
breaks  the  emotional  rhythm.  And  we  have  named 
three  of  Massinger's  best 

A  dramatist  who  so  skilfully  welds  together  parts 
which  have  no  reason  for  being  together,  who 
fabricates  plays  so  well  knit  and  so  remote  from  unity, 
we  should  expect  to  exhibit  the  same  synthetic 
cunning  in  character.  Mr.  Cruickshank,  Coleridge, 
and  Leslie  Stephen  are  pretty  well  agreed  that 
Massinger  is  no  master  of  characterization.  You 
can,  in  fact,  put  together  heterogeneous  parts  to  form 
a  lively  play ;  but  a  character,  to  be  living,  must  be 
conceived  from  some  emotional  unity.  A  character 
is  not  to  be  composed  of  scattered  observations  of 
human  nature,  but  of  parts  which  are  felt  together. 
Hence  it  is  that  although  Massinger's  failure  to  draw 
a  moving  character  is  no  greater  than  his  failure  to 
1 20 


Philip  Massinger 

make  a  whole  play,  and  probably  springs  from  the 
same  defective  sensitiveness,  yet  the  failure  in 
character  is  more  conspicuous  and  more  disastrous. 
A  "  living  "  character  is  not  necessarily  "  true  to  life." 
It  is  a  person  whom  we  can  see  and  hear,  whether  he 
be  true  or  false  to  human  nature  as  we  know  it. 
What  the  creator  of  character  needs  is  not  so  much 
knowledge  of  motives  as  keen  sensibility;  the 
dramatist  need  not  understand  people ;  but  he  must 
be  exceptionally  aware  of  them.  This  awareness  was 
not  given  to  Massinger.  He  inherits  the  traditions 
of  conduct,  female  chastity,  hymeneal  sanctity,  the 
fashion  of  honour,  without  either  criticizing  or 
informing  them  from  his  own  experience.  In  the 
earlier  drama  these  conventions  are  merely  a  frame- 
work, or  an  alloy  necessary  for  working  the  metal ; 
the  metal  itself  consisted  of  unique  emotions  resulting 
inevitably  from  the  circumstances,  resulting  or 
inhering  as  inevitably  as  the  properties  of  a  chemical 
compound.  Middleton's  heroine,  for  instance,  in  the 
Changeling,  exclaims  in  the  well-known  words — 

Why,  'tis  impossible  thou  canst  be  so  wicked, 

To  shelter  such  a  cunning  cruelty 

To  make  his  death  the  murderer  of  my  honour  ! 

The  word  "honour"  in  such  a  situation  is  out  of 
date,  but  the  emotion  of  Beatrice  at  that  moment, 
given  the  conditions,  is  as  permanent  and  substantial 
as  anything  in  human  nature.  The  emotion  of 
Othello  in  Act  v.  is  the  emotion  of  a  man  who 
discovers  that  the  worst  part  of  his  own  soul  has  been 
exploited  by  some  one  more  clever  than  he ;  it  is  this 
emotion  carried  by  the  writer  to  a  very  high  degree  of 
121 


The  Sacred  Wood 

intensity.  Even  in  so  late  and  so  decayed  a  drama 
as  that  of  Ford,  the  framework  of  emotions  and  morals 
of  the  time  is  only  the  vehicle  for  statements  of 
feeling  which  are  unique  and  imperishable:  Ford's 
and  Ford's  only. 

What  may  be  considered  corrupt  or  decadent  in 
the  morals  of  Massinger  is  not  an  alteration  or 
diminution  in  morals ;  it  is  simply  the  disappearance 
of  all  the  personal  and  real  emotions  which  this 
morality  supported  and  into  which  it  introduced  a 
kind  of  order.  As  soon  as  the  emotions  disappear 
the  morality  which  ordered  it  appears  hideous. 
Puritanism  itself  became  repulsive  only  when  it 
appeared  as  the  survival  of  a  restraint  after  the  feelings 
which  it  restrained  had  gone.  When  Massinger's 
ladies  resist  temptation  they  do  not  appear  to  undergo 
any  important  emotion;  they  merely  know  what  is 
expected  of  them ;  they  manifest  themselves  to  us  as 
lubricious  prudes.  Any  age  has  its  conventions; 
and  any  age  might  appear  absurd  when  its  conven- 
tions get  into  the  hands  of  a  man  like  Massinger — a 
man,  we  mean,  of  so  exceptionally  superior  a  literary 
talent  as  Massinger's,  and  so  paltry  an  imagination. 
The  Elizabethan  morality  was  an  important  conven- 
tion ;  important  because  it  was  not  consciously  of  one 
social  class  alone,  because  it  provided  a  framework 
for  emotions  to  which  all  classes  could  respond,  and 
it  hindered  no  feeling.  It  was  not  hypocritical,  and 
it  did  not  suppress ;  its  dark  corners  are  haunted  by 
the  ghosts  of  Mary  Fitton  and  perhaps  greater.  It  is 
a  subject  which  has  not  been  sufficiently  investigated. 
Fletcher  and  Massinger  rendered  it  ridiculous;  not 
by  not  believing  in  it,  but  because  they  were  men  of 
122 


Philip  Massinger 

great  talents  who  could  not  vivify  it;  because  they 
could  not  fit  into  it  passionate,  complete  human 
characters. 

The  tragedy  of  Massinger  is  interesting  chiefly 
according  to  the  definition  given  before  ;  the  highest 
degree  of  verbal  excellence  compatible  with  the  most 
rudimentary  development  of  the  senses.  Massinger 
succeeds  better  in  something  which  is  not  tragedy; 
in  the  romantic  comedy.  A  Very  Woman  deserves 
all  the  praise  that  Swinburne,  with  his  almost  unerring 
gift  for  selection,  has  bestowed  upon  it.  The  probable 
collaboration  of  Fletcher  had  the  happiest  result ;  for 
certainly  that  admirable  comic  personage,  the  tipsy 
Borachia,  is  handled  with  more  humour  than  we  expect 
of  Massinger.  It  is  a  play  which  would  be  enjoyable 
on  the  stage.  The  form,  however,  of  romantic 
comedy  is  itself  inferior  and  decadent.  There  is  an 
inflexibility  about  the  poetic  drama  which  is  by  no 
means  a  matter  of  classical,  or  neoclassical,  or  pseudo- 
classical  law.  The  poetic  drama  might  develop  forms 
highly  different  from  those  of  Greece  or  England, 
India  or  Japan.  Conceded  the  utmost  freedom,  the 
romantic  drama  would  yet  remain  inferior.  The 
poetic  drama  must  have  an  emotional  unity,  let  the 
emotion  be  whatever  you  like.  It  must  have  a 
dominant  tone;  and  if  this  be  strong  enough,  the 
most  heterogeneous  emotions  may  be  made  to  rein- 
force it.  The  romantic  comedy  is  a  skilful  concoction 
of  inconsistent  emotion,  a  revue  of  emotion.  A  Very 
Woman  is  surpassingly  well  plotted.  The  debility  of 
romantic  drama  does  not  depend  upon  extravagant 
setting,  or  preposterous  events,  or  inconceivable 
coincidences;  all  these  might  be  found  in  a  serious 
123 


The  Sacred  Wood 

tragedy  or  comedy.  It  consists  in  an  internal  incoher- 
ence of  feelings,  a  concatenation  of  emotions  which 
signifies  nothing. 

From  this  type  of  play,  so  eloquent  of  emotional 
disorder,  there  was  no  swing  back  of  the  pendulum. 
Changes  never  come  by  a  simple  reinfusion  into  the 
form  which  the  life  has  just  left.  The  romantic  drama 
was  not  a  new  form.  Massinger  dealt  not  with 
emotions  so  much  as  with  the  social  abstractions  of 
emotions,  more  generalized  and  therefore  more  quickly 
and  easily  interchangeable  within  the  confines  of  a 
single  action.  He  was  not  guided  by  direct  com- 
munications through  the  nerves.  Romantic  drama 
tended,  accordingly,  toward  what  is  sometimes  called 
the  "  typical,"  but  which  is  not  the  truly  typical ;  for  the 
typical  figure  in  a  drama  is  always  particularized — an 
individual.  The  tendency  of  the  romantic  drama  was 
toward  a  form  which  continued  it  in  removing  its 
more  conspicuous  vices,  was  toward  a  more  severe 
external  order.  This  form  was  the  Heroic  Drama. 
We  look  into  Dryden's  "  Essay  on  Heroic  Plays,"  and 
we  find  that  "  love  and  valour  ought  to  be  the  subject 
of  an  heroic  poem."  Massinger,  in  his  destruction  of 
the  old  drama,  had  prepared  the  way  for  Dryden. 
The  intellect  had  perhaps  exhausted  the  old  con- 
ventions. It  was  not  able  to  supply  the  impoverish- 
ment of  Reeling. 

Such  are  the  reflections  aroused  by  an  examination 
of  some  of  Massinger's  plays  in  the  light  of  Mr. 
Cruickshank's  statement  that  Massinger's  age  "had 
much  culture,  but,  without  being  exactly  corrupt, 
lacked  moral  fibre."  The  statement  may  be  supported. 
In  order  to  fit  into  our  estimate  of  Massinger  the  two 
124 


Philip  Massinger 

admirable  comedies — A  New  Way  to  Pay  Old  Debts 
and  The  City  Madam — a  more  extensive  research 
would  be  required  than  is  possible  within  our  limits. 


II 

Massinger's  tragedy  may  be  summarized  for  the 
unprepared  reader  as  being  very  dreary.  It  is  dreary, 
unless  one  is  prepared  by  a  somewhat  extensive 
knowledge  of  his  livelier  contemporaries  to  grasp 
without  fatigue  precisely  the  elements  in  it  which  are 
capable  of  giving  pleasure;  or  unless  one  is  incited 
by  a  curious  interest  in  versification.  In  comedy, 
however,  Massinger  was  one  of  the  few  masters  in  the 
language.  He  was  a  master  in  a  comedy  which  is 
serious,  even  sombre ;  and  in  one  aspect  of  it  there 
are  only  two  names  to  mention  with  his :  those  of 
Marlowe  and  Jonson.  In  comedy,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  a  greater  variety  of  methods  were  discovered  and 
employed  than  in  tragedy.  The  method  of  Kyd,  as 
developed  by  Shakespeare,  was  the  standard  for 
English  tragedy  down  to  Otway  and  to  Shelley.  But 
both  individual  temperament,  and  varying  epochs, 
made  more  play  with  comedy.  The  comedy  of  Lyly 
is  one  thing;  that  of  Shakespeare,  followed  by 
Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  is  another;  and  that  of 
Middleton  is  a  third.  And  Massinger,  while  he  has 
his  own  comedy,  is  nearer  to  Marlowe  and  Jonson 
than  to  any  of  these. 

Massinger  was,  in  fact,  as  a  comic  writer,  fortunate 

in  the  moment  at  which  he  wrote.     His  comedy  is 

transitional;    but   it    happens   to   be    one   of  those 

transitions  which  contain  some  merit  not  anticipated 

125 


The  Sacred  Wood 

by  predecessors  or  refined  upon  by  later  writers.  The 
comedy  of  Jonson  is  nearer  to  caricature;  that  of 
Middleton  a  more  photographic  delineation  of  low 
life.  Massinger  is  nearer  to  Restoration  comedy,  and 
more  like  his  contemporary,  Shirley,  in  assuming  a 
certain  social  level,  certain  distinctions  of  class,  as 
a  postulate  of  his  comedy.  This  resemblance  to  later 
comedy  is  also  the  important  point  of  difference 
between  Massinger  and  earlier  comedy.  But 
Massinger's  comedy  differs  just  as  widely  from  the 
comedy  of  manners  proper ;  he  is  closer  to  that  in  his 
romantic  drama — in  A  Very  Woman— than  in  A  New 
Way  to  Pay  Old  Debts  \  in  his  comedy  his  interest 
is  not  in  the  follies  of  love-making  or  the  absurdities 
of  social  pretence,  but  in  the  unmasking  of  villainy 
Just  as  the  Old  Comedy  of  Moliere  differs  in  principle 
from  the  New  Comedy  of  Marivaux,  so  the  Old 
Comedy  of  Massinger  differs  from  the  New  Comedy 
of  his  contemporary  Shirley.  And  as  in  France,  so 
in  England,  the  more  farcical  comedy  was  the  more 
serious.  Massinger's  great  comic  rogues,  Sir  Giles 
Overreach  and  Luke  Frugal,  are  members  of  the  large 
English  family  which  includes  Barabas  and  Sir 
Epicure  Mammon,  and  from  which  Sir  Tunbelly 
Clumsy  claims  descent. 

What  distinguishes  Massinger  from  Marlowe  and 
Jonson  is  in  the  main  an  inferiority.  The  greatest 
comic  characters  of  these  two  dramatists  are  slight 
work  in  comparison  with  Shakespeare's  best — Falstaff 
has  a  third  dimension  and  Epicure  Mammon  has 
only  two.  But  this  slightness  is  part  of  the  nature  of 
the  art  which  Jonson  practised,  a  smaller  art  than 
Shakespeare's.  The  inferiority  of  Massinger  to  Jonson 
126 


Philip  Massinger 

is  an  inferiority,  not  of  one  type  of  art  to  another,  but 
within  Jonson's  type.  It  is  a  simple  deficiency. 
Marlowe's  and  Jonson's  comedies  were  a  view  of  life ; 
they  were,  as  great  literature  is,  the  transformation  of 
a  personality  into  a  personal  work  of  art,  their  life- 
time's work,  long  or  short.  Massinger  is  not  simply 
a  smaller  personality:  his  personality  hardly  exists. 
He  did  not,  out  of  his  own  personality,  build  a  world 
of  art,  as  Shakespeare  and  Marlowe  and  Jonson 
built. 

In  the  fine  pages  which  Remy  de  Gourmont  devotes 
to  Flaubert  in  his  Probleme  du  Style,  the  great 
critic  declares : 

La  vie  est  un  de*pouillement.  Le  but  de  1'activite* 
propre  de  rhomme  est  de  nettoyer  sa  personnalite',  de 
la  laver  de  toutes  les  souillures  qu'y  ddposa  1'e'duca- 
tion,  de  la  ddgager  de  toutes  les  empreintes  qu'y 
laisserent  nos  admirations  adolescentes ; 

and  again : 

Flaubert  incorporait  toute  sa  sensibilite*  k  ses 
ceuvres.  .  .  .  Hors  de  ses  livres,  ou  il  se  transvasait 
goutte  a  goutte,  jusqu'a  la  lie,  Flaubert  est  fort  peu 
inte'ressant.  .  .  . 

Of  Shakespeare  notably,  of  Jonson  less,  of  Marlowe 
(and  of  Keats  to  the  term  of  life  allowed  him),  one 
can  say  that  they  se  transvasaient  goutte  a  goutte ;  and 
in  England,  which  has  produced  a  prodigious  number 
of  men  of  genius  and  comparatively  few  works  of  art, 
there  are  not  many  writers  of  whom  one  can  say  it. 
Certainly  not  of  Massinger.  A  brilliant  master  of 
technique,  he  was  not,  in  this  profound  sense,  an 
artist.  And  so  we  come  to  inquire  how,  if 
127 


The  Sacred  Wood 

this  is  so,  he  could  have  written  two  great  comedies. 
We  shall  probably  be  obliged  to  conclude  that  a 
large  part  of  their  excellence  is,  in  some  way 
which  should  be  defined,  fortuitous  ;  and  that  there- 
fore they  are,  however  remarkable,  not  works  of 
perfect  art. 

This  objection  raised  by  Leslie  Stephen  to 
Massinger's  method  of  revealing  a  villain  has  great 
cogency;  but  I  am  inclined  to  believe  that  the 
cogency  is  due  to  a  somewhat  different  reason  from 
that  which  Leslie  Stephen  assigns.  His  statement  is 
too  apriorist  to  be  quite  trustworthy.  There  is  no 
reason  why  a  comedy  or  tragedy  villain  should  not 
declare  himself,  and  in  as  long  a  period  as  the  author 
likes ;  but  the  sort  of  villain  who  may  run  on  in  this 
way  is  a  simple  villain  (simple  not  stmpliste). 
Barabas  and  Volpone  can  declare  their  character, 
because  they  have  no  inside  j  appearance  and  reality 
are  coincident ;  they  are  forces  in  particular  directions. 
Massinger's  two  villains  are  not  simple.  Giles  Over- 
reach is  essentially  a  great  force  directed  upon  small 
objects ;  a  great  force,  a  small  mind ;  the  terror  of  a 
dozen  parishes  instead  of  the  conqueror  of  a  world. 
The  force  is  misapplied,  attenuated,  thwarted,  by  the 
man's  vulgarity :  he  is  a  great  man  of  the  City,  with- 
out fear,  but  with  the  most  abject  awe  of  the 
aristocracy.  He  is  accordingly  not  simple,  but  a 
product  of  a  certain  civilization,  and  he  is  not  wholly 
conscious.  His  monologues  are  meant  to  be,  not 
what  he  thinks  he  is,  but  what  he  really  is :  and  yet 
they  are  not  the  truth  about  him,  and  he  himself 
certainly  does  not  know  the  truth.  To  declare  him- 
self, therefore,  is  impossible. 
128 


Philip  Massinger 

Nay,  when  my  ears  are  pierced  with  widows'  cries, 
And  undone  orphans  wash  with  tears  my  threshold, 
I  only  think  what  'tis  to  have  my  daughter 
Right  honourable ;  and  'tis  a  powerful  charm 
Makes  me  insensible  of  remorse,  or  pity, 
Or  the  least  sting  of  conscience. 

This   is   the  wrong  note.     Elsewhere  we   have  the 

right  : 

Thou  art  a  fool ; 

In  being  out  of  office,  I  am  out  of  danger ; 
Where,  if  I  were  a  justice,  besides  the  trouble, 
I  might  or  out  of  wilfulness,  or  error, 
Run  myself  finely  into  a  praemunire, 
And  so  become  a  prey  to  the  informer, 
No,  I'll  have  none  oft ;  'tis  enough  I  keep 
Greedy  at  my  devotion :  so  he  serve 
My  purposes,  let  him  hang,  or  damn,  I  care  not  ... 

And  how  well  tuned,  well  modulated,  here,  the 
diction  !  The  man  is  audible  and  visible.  But  from 
passages  like  the  first  we  may  be  permitted  to  infer 
that  Massinger  was  unconscious  of  trying  to  develop 
a  different  kind  of  character  from  any  that  Marlowe 
or  Jonson  had  invented. 

Luke  Frugal,  in  The  City  Madam,  is  not  so 
great  a  character  as  Sir  Giles  Overreach.  But  Luke 
Frugal  just  misses  being  almost  the  greatest  of  all 
hypocrites.  His  humility  in  the  first  act  of  the  play 
is  more  than  half  real.  The  error  in  his  portraiture  is 
not  the  extravagant  hocus-pocus  of  supposed  Indian 
necromancers  by  which  he  is  so  easily  duped,  but  the 
premature  disclosure  of  villainy  in  his  temptation  of 
the  two  apprentices  of  his  brother.  But  for  this,  he 
would  be  a  perfect  chameleon  of  circumstance.  Here, 
again,  we  feel  that  Massinger  was  conscious  only  of 
i  129 


The  Sacred  Wood 

inventing  a  rascal  of  the  old  simpler  farce  type.  But 
the  play  is  not  a  farce,  in  the  sense  in  which  The  Jew 
of  Malta,)  The  Alchemist^  Bartholomew  Fair  are 
farces.  Massinger  had  not  the  personality  to  create 
great  farce,  and  he  was  too  serious  to  invent  trivial 
farce.  The  ability  to  perform  that  slight  distortion  of 
all  the  elements  in  the  world  of  a  play  or  a  story,  so 
that  this  world  is  complete  in  itself,  which  was  given 
to  Marlowe  and  Jonson  (and  to  Rabelais)  and  which 
is  prerequisite  to  great  farce,  was  denied  to  Massinger. 
On  the  other  hand,  his  temperament  was  more  closely 
related  to  theirs  than  to  that  of  Shirley  or  the  Restora- 
tion wits.  His  two  comedies  therefore  occupy  a 
place  by  themselves.  His  ways  of  thinking  and  feel- 
ing isolate  him  from  both  the  Elizabethan  and  the 
later  Caroline  mind.  He  might  almost  have  been  a 
great  realist ;  he  is  killed  by  conventions  which  were 
suitable  for  the  preceding  literary  generation,  but  not 
for  his.  Had  Massinger  been  a  greater  man,  a  man 
of  more  intellectual  courage,  the  current  of  English 
literature  immediately  after  him  might  have  taken  a 
different  course.  The  defect  is  precisely  a  defect  of 
personality.  He  is  not,  however,  the  only  man  of 
letters  who,  at  the  moment  when  a  new  view  of  life  is 
wanted,  has  looked  at  life  through  the  eyes  of  his 
predecessors,  and  only  at  manners  through  his  own. 


130 


Swinburne  as  Poet         o       o       o       o 

IT  is  a  question  of  some  nicety  to  decide  how 
much  must  be  read  of  any  particular  poet.  And 
it  is  not  a  question  merely  of  the  size  of  the  poet. 
There  are  some  poets  whose  every  line  has  unique 
value.  There  are  others  who  can  be  taken  by  a 
few  poems  universally  agreed  upon.  There  are 
others  who  need  be  read  only  in  selections,  but  what 
selections  are  read  will  not  very  much  matter.  Of 
Swinburne,  we  should  like  to  have  the  Atalanta 
entire,  and  a  volume  of  selections  which  should 
certainly  contain  The  Leper^  Laus  Veneris,  and  The 
Triumph  of  Time.  It  ought  to  contain  many  more, 
but  there  is  perhaps  no  other  single  poem  which 
it  would  be  an  error  to  omit.  A  student  of  Swin- 
burne will  want  to  read  one  of  the  Stuart  plays 
and  dip  into  Tristram  of  Lyonesse.  But  almost  no 
one,  to-day,  will  wish  to  read  the  whole  of  Swinburne. 
It  is  not  because  Swinburne  is  voluminous  ;  certain 
poets,  equally  voluminous,  must  be  read  entire.  The 
necessity  and  the  difficulty  of  a  selection  are  due  to 
the  peculiar  nature  of  Swinburne's  contribution, 
which,  it  is  hardly  too  much  to  say,  is  of  a  very 
different  kind  from  that  of  any  other  poet  of  equal 
reputation. 

We  may  take  it  as  undisputed  that  Swinburne  did 
make   a  contribution;   that  he  did   something   that 


The  Sacred  Wood 

had  not  been  done  before,  and  that  what  he  did  will 
not  turn  out  to  be  a  fraud.  And  from  that  we  may 
proceed  to  inquire  what  Swinburne's  contribution 
was,  and  why,  whatever  critical  solvents  we  employ 
to  break  down  the  structure  of  his  verse,  this  con- 
tribution remains.  The  test  is  this :  agreed  that  we 
do  not  (and  I  think  that  the  present  generation  does 
not)  greatly  enjoy  Swinburne,  and  agreed  that  (a 
more  serious  condemnation)  at  one  period  of  our 
lives  we  did  enjoy  him  and  now  no  longer  enjoy 
him ;  nevertheless,  the  words  which  we  use  to  state 
our  grounds  of  dislike  or  indifference  cannot  be 
applied  to  Swinburne  as  they  can  to  bad  poetry. 
The  words  of  condemnation  are  words  which  express 
his  qualities.  You  may  say  "diffuse."  But  the 
diffuseness  is  essential;  had  Swinburne  practised 
greater  concentration  his  verse  would  be,  not  better 
in  the  same  kind,  but  a  different  thing.  His  diffuse- 
ness  is  one  of  his  glories.  That  so  little  material  as 
appears  to  be  employed  in  The  Triumph  of  Time 
should  release  such  an  amazing  number  of  words, 
requires  what  there  is  no  reason  to  call  anything  but 
genius.  You  could  not  condense  The  Triumph  of 
Time.  You  could  only  leave  out.  And  this  would 
destroy  the  poem;  though  no  one  stanza  seems 
essential.  Similarly,  a  considerable  quantity  —  a 
volume  of  selections — is  necessary  to  give  the  quality 
of  Swinburne  although  there  is  perhaps  no  one  poem 
essential  in  this  selection. 

If,  then,  we  must  be  very  careful  in  applying  terms 
of  censure,  like  "  diffuse,"  we  must  be  equally  care- 
ful of  praise.     "  The  beauty  of  Swinburne's  verse  is 
the  sound,"  people  say,   explaining,  "he  had  little 
132 


Swinburne  as  Poet 

visual  imagination."  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  the 
word  "  beauty "  is  hardly  to  be  used  in  connection 
with  Swinburne's  verse  at  all;  but  in  any  case  the 
beauty  or  effect  of  sound  is  neither  that  of  music  nor 
that  of  poetry  which  can  be  set  to  music.  There  is 
no  reason  why  verse  intended  to  be  sung  should  not 
present  a  sharp  visual  image  or  convey  an  important 
intellectual  meaning,  for  it  supplements  the  music 
by  another  means  of  affecting  the  feelings.  What  we 
get  in  Swinburne  is  an  expression  by  sound,  which 
could  not  possibly  associate  itself  with  music.  For 
what  he  gives  is  not  images  and  ideas  and  music,  it 
is  one  thing  with  a  curious  mixture  of  suggestions  of 
all  three. 

Shall  I  come,  if  I  swim  ?  wide  are  the  waves,  you  see  ; 
Shall  I  come,  if  I  fly,  my  dear  Love,  to  thee  ? 

This  is  Campion,  and  an  example  of  the  kind  of 
music  that  is  not  to  be  found  in  Swinburne.  It  is  an 
arrangement  and  choice  of  words  which  has  a  sound- 
value  and  at  the  same  time  a  coherent  comprehensible 
meaning,  and  the  two  things — the  musical  value  and 
meaning — are  two  things,  not  one.  But  in  Swinburne 
there  is  no  pure  beauty — no  pure  beauty  of  sound, 
or  of  image,  or  of  idea. 

Music,  when  soft  voices  die, 
Vibrates  in  the  memory ; 
Odours,  when  sweet  violets  sicken, 
Live  within  the  sense  they  quicken. 

Rose  leaves,  when  the  rose  is  dead, 
Are  heaped  for  the  beloved's  bed  ; 
And  so  thy  thoughts,  when  thou  art  gone, 
Love  itself  shall  slumber  on. 

133 


The  Sacred  Wood 

I  quote  from  Shelley,  because  Shelley  is  supposed 
to  be  the  master  of  Swinburne ;  and  because  his 
song,  like  that  of  Campion,  has  what  Swinburne 
has  not — a  beauty  of  music  and  a  beauty  of  content ; 
and  because  it  is  clearly  and  simply  expressed,  with 
only  two  adjectives.  Now,  in  Swinburne  the  meaning 
and  the  sound  are  one  thing.  He  is  concerned  with 
the  meaning  of  the  word  in  a  peculiar  way :  he 
employs,  or  rather  "  works,"  the  word's  meaning.  And 
this  is  connected  with  an  interesting  fact  about  his 
vocabulary :  he  uses  the  most  general  word,  because 
his  emotion  is  never  particular,  never  in  direct  line 
of  vision,  never  focused ;  it  is  emotion  reinforced,  not 
by  intensification,  but  by  expansion. 

There  lived  a  singer  in  France  of  old 
By  the  tideless  dolorous  midland  sea. 

In  a  land  of  sand  and  ruin  and  gold 

There  shone  one  woman,  and  none  but  she. 

You  see  that  Provence  is  the  merest  point  of  diffusion 
here.  Swinburne  defines  the  place  by  the  most 
general  word,  which  has  for  him  its  own  value. 
"Gold,"  "ruin,"  "dolorous":  it  is  not  merely  the 
sound  that  he  wants,  but  the  vague  associations  of 
idea  that  the  words  give  him.  He  has  not  his  eye 
on  a  particular  place,  as 

Li  ruscelletti  che  dei  verdi  colli 

Del  Casentin  discendon  giuso  in  Arno  .  .  . 

It  is,  in  fact,  the  word  that  gives  him  the  thrill,  not 
the  object.  When  you  take  to  pieces  any  verse  of 
Swinburne,  you  find  always  that  the  object  was  not 
there — only  the  word.  Compare 

Snowdrops  that  plead  for  pardon 
And  pine  for  fright 

134 


Swinburne  as  Poet 

with  the  daffodils  that  come  before  the  swallow  dares. 
The  snowdrop  of  Swinburne  disappears,  the  daffodil 
of  Shakespeare  remains.  The  swallow  of  Shakespeare 
remains  in  the  verse  in  Macbeth ;  the  bird  of 
Wordsworth 

Breaking  the  silence  of  the  seas 

remains ;  the  swallow  of  "  Itylus  "  disappears.  Com- 
pare, again,  a  chorus  of  Atalanta  with  a  chorus 
from  Athenian  tragedy.  The  chorus  of  Swinburne 
is  almost  a  parody  of  the  Athenian :  it  is  sententious, 
but  it  has  not  even  the  significance  of  commonplace. 

At  least  we  witness  of  thee  ere  we  die 

That  these  things  are  not  otherwise,  but  thus.  .  .   . 

Before  the  beginning  of  years 

There  came  to  the  making  of  man 

Time  with  a  gift  of  tears  ; 

Grief  with  a  glass  that  ran.  .  .  . 

This  is  not  merely  "  music  "  ;  it  is  effective  because  it 
appears  to  be  a  tremendous  statement,  like  statements 
made  in  our  dreams  ;  when  we  wake  up  we  find  that 
the  "  glass  that  ran "  would  do  better  for  time  than 
for  grief,  and  that  the  gift  of  tears  would  be  as 
appropriately  bestowed  by  grief  as  by  time. 

It  might  seem  to  be  intimated,  by  what  has  been 
said,  that  the  work  of  Swinburne  can  be  shown  to 
be  a  sham,  just  as  bad  verse  is  a  sham.  It  would 
only  be  so  if  you  could  produce  or  suggest  something 
that  it  pretends  to  be  and  is  not.  The  world  of 
Swinburne  does  not  depend  upon  some  other  world 
which  it  simulates ;  it  has  the  necessary  completeness 
and  self-sufficiency  for  justification  and  permanence. 
It  is  impersonal,  and  no  one  else  could  have  made  it. 
135 


The  Sacred  Wood 

The  deductions  are  true  to  the  postulates.  It  is 
indestructible.  None  of  the  obvious  complaints  that 
were  or  might  have  been  brought  to  bear  upon  the 
first  Poems  and  Ballads  holds  good.  The  poetry  is 
not  morbid,  it  is  not  erotic,  it  is  not  destructive.  These 
are  adjectives  which  can  be  applied  to  the  material, 
the  human  feelings,  which  in  Swinburne's  case  do 
not  exist.  The  morbidity  is  not  of  human  feeling 
but  of  language.  Language  in  a  healthy  state 
presents  the  object,  is  so  close  to  the  object  that 
the  two  are  identified. 

They  are  identified  in  the  verse  of  Swinburne  solely 
because  the  object  has  ceased  to  exist,  because  the 
meaning  is  merely  the  hallucination  of  meaning, 
because  language,  uprooted,  has  adapted  itself  to  an 
independent  life  of  atmospheric  nourishment.  In 
Swinburne,  for  example,  we  see  the  word  "  weary " 
flourishing  in  this  way  independent  of  the  particular 
and  actual  weariness  of  flesh  or  spirit.  The  bad  poet 
dwells  partly  in  a  world  of  objects  and  partly  in  a 
world  of  words,  and  he  never  can  get  them  to  fit. 
Only  a  man  of  genius  could  dwell  so  exclusively  and 
consistently  among  words  as  Swinburne.  His  language 
is  not,  like  the  language  of  bad  poetry,  dead.  It  is 
very  much  alive,  with  this  singular  life  of  its  own. 
But  the  language  which  is  more  important  to  us  is 
that  which  is  struggling  to  digest  and  express  new 
objects,  new  groups  of  objects,  new  feelings,  new 
aspects,  as,  for  instance,  the  prose  of  Mr.  James 
Joyce  or  the  earlier  Conrad. 


136 


Blake 


IF  one  follow  Blake's  mind  through  the  several 
stages  of  his  poetic  development  it  is  impossible  to 
regard  him  as  a  naif,  a  wild  man,  a  wild  pet  for  the 
supercultivated.  The  strangeness  is  evaporated,  the 
peculiarity  is  seen  to  be  the  peculiarity  of  all  great 
poetry:  something  which  is  found  (not  everywhere) 
in  Homer  and  ^Eschylus  and  Dante  and  Villon,  and 
profound  and  concealed  in  the  work  of  Shakespeare — 
and  also  in  another  form  in  Montaigne  and  in  Spinoza. 
It  is  merely  a  peculiar  honesty,  which,  in  a  world  too 
frightened  to  be  honest,  is  peculiarly  terrifying.  It  is 
an  honesty  against  which  the  whole  world  conspires, 
because  it  is  unpleasant.  Blake's  poetry  has  the  un- 
pleasantness of  great  poetry.  Nothing  that  can  be 
called  morbid  or  abnormal  or  perverse,  none  of  the 
things  which  exemplify  the  sickness  of  an  epoch  or  a 
fashion,  have  this  quality ;  only  those  things  which, 
by  some  extraordinary  labour  of  simplification,  exhibit 
the  essential  sickness  or  strength  of  the  human  soul. 
And  this  honesty  never  exists  without  great  technical 
accomplishment.  The  question  about  Blake  the  man 
is  the  question  of  the  circumstances  that  concurred 
to  permit  this  honesty  in  his  work,  and  what  circum- 
137 


The  Sacred  Wood 

stances  define  its  limitations.  The  favouring  con- 
ditions probably  include  these  two  :  that,  being  early 
apprenticed  to  a  manual  occupation,  he  was  not 
compelled  to  acquire  any  other  education  in  literature 
than  he  wanted,  or  to  acquire  it  for  any  other  reason 
than  that  he  wanted  it;  and  that,  being  a  humble 
engraver,  he  had  no  journalistic-social  career  open  to 
him. 

There  was,  that  is  to  say,  nothing  to  distract  him 
from  his  interests  or  to  corrupt  these  interests : 
neither  the  ambitions  of  parents  or  wife,  nor  the 
standards  of  society,  nor  the  temptations  of  success ; 
nor  was  he  exposed  to  imitation  of  himself  or  of  any- 
one else.  These  circumstances — not  his  supposed 
inspired  and  untaught  spontaneity — are  what  make 
him  innocent.  His  early  poems  show  what  the  poems 
of  a  boy  of  genius  ought  to  show,  immense  power  of 
assimilation.  Such  early  poems  are  not,  as  usually 
supposed,  crude  attempts  to  do  something  beyond 
the  boy's  capacity ;  they  are,  in  the  case  of  a  boy  of 
real  promise,  more  likely  to  be  quite  mature  and 
successful  attempts  to  do  something  small.  So  with 
Blake,  his  early  poems  are  technically  admirable,  and 
their  originality  is  in  an  occasional  rhythm.  The 
verse  of  Edward  III  deserves  study.  But  his 
affection  for  certain  Elizabethans  is  not  so  surprising 
as  his  affinity  with  the  very  best  work  of  his  own 
century.  He  is  very  like  Collins,  he  is  very  eighteenth 
century.  The  poem  Whether  on  Idds  shady  brow 
is  eighteenth-century  work ;  the  movement,  the  weight 
of  it,  the  syntax,  the  choice  of  words — 

The  languid  strings  do  scarcely  move  ! 
The  sound  is  forced,  the  notes  are  few ! 

138 


Blake 

this  is  contemporary  with  Gray  and  Collins,  it  is  the 
poetry  of  a  language  which  has  undergone  the 
discipline  of  prose.  Blake  up  to  twenty  is  decidedly 
a  traditional. 

Blake's  beginnings  as  a  poet,  then,  are  as  normal 
as  the  beginnings  of  Shakespeare.  His  method  of 
composition,  in  his  mature  work,  is  exactly  like  that 
of  other  poets.  He  has  an  idea  (a  feeling,  an  image), 
he  develops  it  by  accretion  or  expansion,  alters  his 
verse  often,  and  hesitates  often  over  the  final  choice.1 
The  idea,  of  course,  simply  comes,  but  upon  arrival 
it  is  subjected  to  prolonged  manipulation.  In  the 
first  phase  Blake  is  concerned  with  verbal  beauty ;  in 
the  second  he  becomes  the  apparent  naif,  really  the 
mature  intelligence.  It  is  only  when  the  ideas  be- 
come more  automatic,  come  more  freely  and  are  less 
manipulated,  that  we  begin  to  suspect  their  origin,  to 
suspect  that  they  spring  from  a  shallower  source. 

The  Songs  of  Innocence  and  of  Experience,  and 
the  poems  from  the  Rossetti  manuscript,  are  the 
poems  of  a  man  with  a  profound  interest  in  human 
emotions,  and  a  profound  knowledge  of  them.  The 
emotions  are  presented  in  an  extremely  simplified, 
abstract  form.  This  form  is  one  illustration  of  the 

1  I  do  not  know  why  M.  Berger  should  say,  without  qualifica- 
tion, in  his  William  Blake:  mysticisme  et  patsie^  that  "son 
respect  pour  1'esprit  qui  soufflait  en  lui  et  qui  dictait  ses  paroles 
1'empechait  de  les  corriger  jamais."  Dr.  Sampson,  in  his 
Oxford  edition  of  Blake,  gives  us  to  understand  that  Blake 
believed  much  of  his  writing  to  be  automatic,  but  observes 
that  Blake's  "meticulous  care  in  composition  is  everywhere 
apparent  in  the  poems  preserved  in  rough  draft  .  .  .  altera- 
tion on  alteration,  rearrangement  after  rearrangement,  de- 
letions, additions,  and  inversions.  ..." 

139 


The  Sacred  Wood 

eternal  struggle  of  art  against  education,  of  the  literary 
artist  against  the  continuous  deterioration  of  language. 
It  is  important  that  the  artist  should  be  highly 
educated  in  his  own  art;  but  his  education  is  one 
that  is  hindered  rather  than  helped  by  the  ordinary 
processes  of  society  which  constitute  education  for 
the  ordinary  man.  For  these  processes  consist 
largely  in  the  acquisition  of  impersonal  ideas  which 
obscure  what*  we  really  are  and  feel,  what  we  really 
want,  and  what  really  excites  our  interest.  It  is  of 
course  not  the  actual  information  acquired,  but  the 
conformity  which  the  accumulation  of  knowledge  is 
apt  to  impose,  that  is  harmful.  Tennyson  is  a  very 
fair  example  of  a  poet  almost  wholly  encrusted  with 
parasitic  opinion,  almost  wholly  merged  into  his 
environment.  Blake,  on  the  other  hand,  knew  what 
interested  him,  and  he  therefore  presents  only  the 
essential,  only,  in  fact,  what  can  be  presented,  and 
need  not  be  explained.  And  because  he  was  not 
distracted,  or  frightened,  or  occupied  in  anything  but 
exact  statement,  he  understood.  He  was  naked,  and 
saw  man  naked,  and  from  the  centre  of  his  own  crystal. 
To  him  there  was  no  more  reason  why  Swedenborg 
should  be  absurd  than  Locke.  He  accepted  Sweden- 
borg, and  eventually  rejected  him,  for  reasons  of  his 
own.  He  approached  everything  with  a  mind  un- 
clouded by  current  opinions.  There  was  nothing  of 
the  superior  person  about  him.  This  makes  him 
terrifying. 

II 

But  if  there   was   nothing  to   distract  him   from 
sincerity  there  were,  on  the  other  hand,  the  dangers 
140 


Blake 

to  which  the  naked  man  is  exposed.  His  philo- 
sophy, like  his  visions,  like  his  insight,  like  his 
technique,  was  his  own.  And  accordingly  he  was 
inclined  to  attach  more  importance  to  it  than  an 
artist  should ;  this  is  what  makes  him  eccentric,  and 
makes  him  inclined  to  formlessness. 

But  most  through  midnight  streets  I  hear 

How  the  youthful  harlot's  curse 

Blasts  the  new-born  infant's  tear, 

And  blights  with  plagues  the  marriage  hearse, 

is  the  naked  vision ; 

Love  seeketh  only  self  to  please, 

To  bind  another  to  its  delight, 

Joys  in  another's  loss  of  ease, 

And  builds  a  Hell  in  Heaven's  despite, 

is  the  naked  observation;  and  The  Marriage  of 
Heaven  and  Hell  is  naked  philosophy,  presented. 
But  Blake's  occasional  marriages  of  poetry  and 
philosophy  are  not  so  felicitous. 

He  who  would   do  good  to  another  must   do  it  in   Minute 

Particulars. 
General  Good  is  the  plea  of  the  scoundrel,    hypocrite,    and 

flatterer ; 
For  Art  and  Science  cannot  exist  but  in  minutely  organized 

particulars.  .  .  . 

One  feels  that  the  form  is  not  well  chosen.  The 
borrowed  philosophy  of  Dante  and  Lucretius  is 
perhaps  not  so  interesting,  but  it  injures  their  form 
less.  Blake  did  not  have  that  more  Mediterranean 
gift  of  form  which  knows  how  to  borrow  as  Dante 
borrowed  his  theory  of  the  soul;  he  must  needs 
create  a  philosophy  as  well  as  a  poetry.  A  similar 
formlessness  attacks  his  draughtsmanship.  The  fault 
141 


The  Sacred  Wood 

is  most  evident,  of  course,  in  the  longer  poems — or 
rather,  the  poems  in  which  structure  is  important. 
You  cannot  create  a  very  large  poem  without  intro- 
ducing a  more  impersonal  point  of  view,  or  splitting 
it  up  into  various  personalities.  But  the  weakness  of 
the  long  poems  is  certainly  not  that  they  are  too 
visionary,  too  remote  from  the  world.  It  is  that 
Blake  did  not  see  enough,  became  too  much  occupied 
with  ideas. 

We  have  the  same  respect  for  Blake's  philosophy 
(and  perhaps  for  that  of  Samuel  Butler)  that  we  have 
for  an  ingenious  piece  of  home-made  furniture:  we 
admire  the  man  who  has  put  it  together  out  of  the 
odds  and  ends  about  the  house.  England  has  pro- 
duced a  fair  number  of  these  resourceful  Robinson 
Crusoes;  but  we  are  not  really  so  remote  from  the 
Continent,  or  from  our  own  past,  as  to  be  deprived  of 
the  advantages  of  culture  if  we  wish  them. 

We  may  speculate,  for  amusement,  whether  it 
would  not  have  been  beneficial  to  the  north  of 
Europe  generally,  and  to  Britain  in  particular,  to 
have  had  a  more  continuous  religious  history.  The 
local  divinities  of  Italy  were  not  wholly  exterminated 
by  Christianity,  and  they  were  not  reduced  to  the 
dwarfish  fate  which  fell  upon  our  trolls  and  pixies. 
The  latter,  with  the  major  Saxon  deities,  were 
perhaps  no  great  loss  in  themselves,  but  they  left  an 
empty  place  ;  and  perhaps  our  mythology  was  further 
impoverished  by  the  divorce  from  Rome.  Milton's 
celestial  and  infernal  regions  are  large  but  in- 
sufficiently furnished  apartments  filled  by  heavy 
conversation  ;  and  one  remarks  about  the  Puritan 
mythology  an  historical  thinness.  And  about  Blake's 
142 


Blake 

supernatural  territories,  as  about  the  supposed  ideas 
that  dwell  there,  we  cannot  help  commenting  on  a 
certain  meanness  of  culture.  They  illustrate  the 
crankiness,  the  eccentricity,  which  frequently  affects 
writers  outside  of  the  Latin  traditions,  and  which 
such  a  critic  as  Arnold  should  certainly  have  re- 
buked. And  they  are  not  essential  to  Blake's 
inspiration. 

Blake  was  endowed  with  a  capacity  for  considerable 
understanding  of  human  nature,  with  a  remarkable 
and  original  sense  of  language  and  the  music  of 
language,  and  a  gift  of  hallucinated  vision.  Had 
these  been  controlled  by  a  respect  for  impersonal 
reason,  for  common  sense,  for  the  objectivity  of 
science,  it  would  have  been  better  for  him.  What 
his  genius  required,  and  what  it  sadly  lacked,  was  a 
framework  of  accepted  and  traditional  ideas  which 
would  have  prevented  him  from  indulging  in  a  philo- 
sophy of  his  own,  and  concentrated  his  attention 
upon  the  problems  of  the  poet.  Confusion  of 
thought,  emotion,  and  vision  is  what  we  find  in  such 
a  work  as  Also  Sprach  Zarathustra ;  it  is  eminently 
not  a  Latin  virtue.  The  concentration  resulting 
from  a  framework  of  mythology  and  theology  and 
philosophy  is  one  of  the  reasons  why  Dante  is  a 
classic,  and  Blake  only  a  poet  of  genius.  The  fault 
is  perhaps  not  with  Blake  himself,  but  with  the 
environment  which  failed  to  provide  what  such  a 
poet  needed ;  perhaps  the  circumstances  compelled 
him  to  fabricate,  perhaps  the  poet  required  the 
philosopher  and  mythologist ;  although  the  conscious 
Blake  may  have  been  quite  unconscious  of  the 
motives. 


Dante  o       o       o       *<£>       o       o       o 

MPAUL  VALERY,  a  writer  for  whom  I  have 
.  considerable  respect,  has  placed  in  his 
most  recent  statement  upon  poetry  a  paragraph  which 
seems  to  me  of  very  doubtful  validity.  I  have  not 
seen  the  complete  essay,  and  know  the  quotation 
only  as  it  appears  in  a  critical  notice  in  the 
Athenceum,  July  23,  1920: 

La  philosophic,  et  meme  la  morale  tendirent  a  fuir 
les  ceuvres  pour  se  placer  dans  les  reflexions  qui  les 
precedent.  .  .  .  Parler  aujourd'hui  de  poetic  philo- 
sophique  (fut-ce  en  invoquant  Alfred  de  Vigny, 
Leconte  de  Lisle,  et  quelques  autres),  c'est  naivement 
confondre  des  conditions  et  des  applications  de 
1'esprit  incompatibles  entre  elles.  N'est-ce  pas 
oublier  que  le  but  de  celui  qui  sp^cule  est  de  fixer 
ou  de  cre*er  une  notion — c'est-a-dire  un  pouvoir  et  un 
instrument  depouvoir,  cependant  que  le  poete  moderne 
essaie  de  produire  en  nous  un  etat  et  de  porter 
cet  £tat  exceptionnel  au  point  d'une  jouissance 
parfaite.  .  .  . 

It  may  be  that  I  do  M.  Vale'ry  an  injustice  which 
I  must  endeavour  to  repair  when  I  have  the  pleasure 
of  reading  his  article  entire.  But  the  paragraph  gives 
the  impression  of  more  than  one  error  of  analysis. 
In  the  first  place,  it  suggests  that  conditions  have 
changed,  that  "  philosophical "  poetry  may  once  have 
been  permissible,  but  that  (perhaps  owing  to  the 
144 


Dante 

greater  specialization  of  the  modern  world)  it  is  now 
intolerable.  We  are  forced  to  assume  that  what  we 
do  not  like  in  our  time  was  never  good  art,  and  that 
what  appears  to  us  good  was  always  so.  If  any 
ancient  "philosophical"  poetry  retains  its  value,  a 
value  which  we  fail  to  find  in  modern  poetry  of  the 
same  type,  we  investigate  on  the  assumption  that  we 
shall  find  some  difference  to  which  the  mere  differ- 
ence of  date  is  irrelevant.  But  if  it  be  maintained  that 
the  older  poetry  has  a  "  philosophic  "  element  and  a 
"  poetic  "  element  which  can  be  isolated,  we  have 
two  tasks  to  perform.  We  must  show  first  in  a  par- 
ticular case — our  case  is  Dante — that  the  philosophy 
is  essential  to  the  structure  and  that  the  structure  is 
essential  to  the  poetic  beauty  of  the  parts ;  and  we 
must  show  that  the  philosophy  is  employed  in  a 
different  form  from  that  which  it  takes  in  admittedly 
unsuccessful  philosophical  poems.  And  if  M.  Vale'ry 
is  in  error  in  his  complete  exorcism  of  "  philosophy," 
perhaps  the  basis  of  the  error  is  his  apparently  com- 
mendatory interpretation  of  the  effort  of  the  modern 
poet,  namely,  that  the  latter  endeavours  "  to  produce 
in  us  a  state" 

The  early  philosophical  poets,  Parmenides  and 
Empedocles,  were  apparently  persons  of  an  impure 
philosophical  inspiration.  Neither  their  predecessors 
nor  their  successors  expressed  themselves  in  verse; 
Parmenides  and  Empedocles  were  persons  who 
mingled  with  genuine  philosophical  ability  a  good 
deal  of  the  emotion  of  the  founder  of  a  second-rate 
religious  system.  They  were  not  interested  ex- 
clusively in  philosophy,  or  religion,  or  poetry,  but  in 
something  which  was  a  mixture  of  all  three;  hence 
K  145 


The  Sacred  Wood 

their  reputation  as  poets  is  low  and  as  philosophers 
should  be  considerably  below  Heraclitus,  Zeno, 
Anaxagoras,  or  Democritus.  The  poem  of  Lucretius 
is  quite  a  different  matter.  For  Lucretius  was 
undoubtedly  a  poet.  He  endeavours  to  expound  a 
philosophical  system,  but  with  a  different  motive  from 
Parmenides  or  Empedocles,  for  this  system  is  already 
in  existence;  he  is  really  endeavouring  to  find  the 
concrete  poetic  equivalent  for  this  system — to  find 
its  complete  equivalent  in  vision.  Only,  as  he  is  an 
innovator  in  this  art,  he  wavers  between  philosophical 
poetry  and  philosophy.  So  we  find  passages  such  as  : 

But  the  velocity  of  thunderbolts  is  great  and  their 
stroke  powerful,  and  they  run  through  their  course 
with  a  rapid  descent,  because  the  force  when  aroused 
first  in  all  cases  collects  itself  in  the  clouds  and  .  .  . 
Let  us  now  sing  what  causes  the  motion  of  the  stars. 
...  Of  all  these  different  smells  then  which  strike 
the  nostrils  one  may  reach  to  a  much  greater  distance 
than  another.  .  .  .l 

But  Lucretius'  true  tendency  is  to  express  an 
ordered  vision  of  the  life  of  man,  with  great  vigour 
of  real  poetic  image  and  often  acute  observation. 

quod  petiere,  premunt  arte  faciuntque  dolorem 
corporis  et  dentes  inlidunt  saepe  labellis 
osculaque  adfligunt,  quia  non  est  pura  voluptas 
et  stimuli  subsunt  qui  instigant  laedere  id  ipsum 
quodcumque  est,  rabies  unde  illaec  germina  surgunt  .  .  . 

medio  de  fonte  leporum 
surgit  amari  aliquid  quod  in  ipsis  floribus  angat  .  .  . 

nee  procumbere  humi  prostratum  et  pandere  palmas 

1  Munro's  translation,  passim. 
146 


Dante 

ante  deum  delubra  nee  aras  sanguine  multo 
spargere  quadrupedum  nee  votis  nectere  vota, 
sed  mage  pacata  posse  omnia  mente  tueri. 

The  philosophy  which  Lucretius  tackled  was  not 
rich  enough  in  variety  of  feeling,  applied  itself  to 
life  too  uniformly,  to  supply  the  material  for  a  wholly 
successful  poem.  It  was  incapable  of  complete  ex- 
pansion into  pure  vision.  But  I  must  ask  M.  Vale"ry 
whether  the  " aim  "  of  Lucretius'  poem  was  "to  fix 
or  create  a  notion  "  or  to  fashion  "  an  instrument  of 
power." 

Without  doubt,  the  effort  of  the  philosopher  proper, 
the  man  who  is  trying  to  deal  with  ideas  in  themselves, 
and  the  effort  of  the  poet,  who  may  be  trying  to  realize 
ideas,  cannot  be  carried  on  at  the  same  time.  But 
this  is  not  to  deny  that  poetry  can  be  in  some  sense 
philosophic.  The  poet  can  deal  with  philosophic 
ideas,  not  as  matter  for  argument,  but  as  matter  for 
inspection.  The  original  form  of  a  philosophy  cannot 
be  poetic.  But  poetry  can  be  penetrated  by  a  philo- 
sophic idea,  it  can  deal  with  this  idea  when  it  has 
reached  the  point  of  immediate  acceptance,  when  it 
has  become  almost  a  physical  modification.  If  we 
divorced  poetry  and  philosophy  altogether,  we  should 
bring  a  serious  impeachment,  not  only  against  Dante, 
but  against  most  of  Dante's  contemporaries. 

Dante  had  the  benefit  of  a  mythology  and  a  theology 
which  had  undergone  a  more  complete  absorption 
into  life  than  those  of  Lucretius.  It  is  curious  that 
not  only  Dante's  detractors,  like  the  Petrarch  of 
Landor's  Pentameron  (if  we  may  apply  so  strong  a 
word  to  so  amiable  a  character),  but  some  of  his 
admirers,  insist  on  the  separation  of  Dante's  "poetry" 
147 


The  Sacred  Wood 

and  Dante's  "  teaching."  Sometimes  the  philosophy 
is  confused  with  the  allegory.  The  philosophy  is  an 
ingredient,  it  is  a  part  of  Dante's  world  just  as  it  is  a 
part  of  life ;  the  allegory  is  the  scaffold  on  which  the 
poem  is  built.  An  American  writer  of  a  little  primer 
of  Dante,  Mr.  Henry  Dwight  Sidgwick,  who  desires 
to  improve  our  understanding  of  Dante  as  a  "  spiritual 
leader,"  says : 

To  Dante  this  literal  Hell  was  a  secondary  matter ; 
so  it  is  to  us.  He  and  we  are  concerned  with  the 
allegory.  That  allegory  is  simple.  Hell  is  the  ab- 
sence of  God.  ...  If  the  reader  begins  with  the 
consciousness  that  he  is  reading  about  sin,  spiritually 
understood,  he  never  loses  the  thread,  he  is  never  at 
a  loss,  never  slips  back  into  the  literal  signification. 

Without  stopping  to  question  Mr.  Sidgwick  on  the 
difference  between  literal  and  spiritual  sin,  we  may 
affirm  that  his  remarks  are  misleading.  Undoubtedly 
the  allegory  is  to  be  taken  seriously,  and  certainly 
the  Comedy  is  in  some  way  a  "moral  education." 
The  question  is  to  find  a  formula  for  the  correspond- 
ence between  the  former  and  the  latter,  to  decide 
whether  the  moral  value  corresponds  directly  to  the 
allegory.  We  can  easily  ascertain  what  importance 
Dante  assigned  to  allegorical  method.  In  the  Con- 
vivio  we  are  seriously  informed  that 

the  principal  design  [of  the  odes]  is  to  lead  men  to 
knowledge  and  virtue,  as  will  be  seen  in  the  progress 
of  the  truth  of  them  \ 

and  we  are  also  given  the  familiar  four  interpretations 

of  an  ode :  literal,  allegorical,  moral,  and  anagogical. 

148 


Dante 

And  so  distinguished  a  scholar  as  M.  Hauvette  repeats 
again  and  again  the  phrase  "  didactique  d'intention." 
We  accept  the  allegory.  Accepted,  there  are  two 
usual  ways  of  dealing  with  it.  One  may,  with  Mr. 
Sidgwick,  dwell  upon  its  significance  for  the  seeker  of 
"spiritual  light,"  or  one  may,  with  Landor,  deplore 
the  spiritual  mechanics  and  find  the  poet  only  in 
passages  where  he  frees  himself  from  his  divine 
purposes.  With  neither  of  these  points  of  view  can 
we  concur.  Mr.  Sidgwick  magnifies  the  "preacher 
and  prophet,"  and  presents  Dante  as  a  superior  Isaiah 
or  Carlyle ;  Landor  reserves  the  poet,  reprehends  the 
scheme,  and  denounces  the  politics.  Some  of  Lander's 
errors  are  more  palpable  than  Mr.  Sidgwick's.  He 
errs,  in  the  first  place,  in  judging  Dante  by  the 
standards  of  classical  epic.  Whatever  the  Comedy 
is,  an  epic  it  is  not.  M.  Hauvette  well  says : 

Rechercher  dans  quelle  mesure  le  poeme  se  rap- 
proche  du  genre  classique  de  Pepopee,  et  dans  quelle 
mesure  il  s'en  ecarte,  est  un  exdrcice  de  rhe'torique 
entierement  inutile,  puisque  Dante,  a  n'en  pas  douter, 
n'a  jamais  eu  1'intention  de  composer  une  action 
£pique  dans  les  regies. 

But  we  must  define  the  framework  of  Dante's  poem 
from  the  result  as  well  as  from  the  intention.  The 
poem  has  not  only  a  framework,  but  a  form ;  and  even 
if  the  framework  be  allegorical,  the  form  may  be 
something  else.  The  examination  of  any  episode 
in  the  Comedy  ought  to  show  that  not  merely  the 
allegorical  interpretation  or  the  didactic  intention,  but 
the  emotional  significance  itself,  cannot  be  isolated 
from  the  rest  of  the  poem.  Landor  appears,  for 
instance,  to  have  misunderstood  such  a  passage  as 
149 


The  Sacred  Wood 

the  Paolo  and  Francesca,  by  failing  to  perceive  its 
relations : 

In  the  midst  of  her  punishment,  Francesca,  when 
she  comes  to  the  tenderest  part  of  her  story,  tells  it 
with  complacency  and  delight. 

This  is  surely  a  false  simplification.  To  have  lost  all 
recollected  delight  would  have  been,  for  Francesca, 
either  loss  of  humanity  or  relief  from  damnation.  The 
ecstasy,  with  the  present  thrill  at  the  remembrance  of 
it,  is  a  part  of  the  torture.  Francesca  is  neither 
stupefied  nor  reformed ;  she  is  merely  damned ;  and 
it  is  a  part  of  damnation  to  experience  desires  that  we 
can  no  longer  gratify.  For  in  Dante's  Hell  souls  are 
not  deadened,  as  they  mostly  are  in  life;  they  are 
actually  in  the  greatest  torment  of  which  each  is 
capable. 

E  il  modo  ancor  m'offende. 

It  is  curious  that  Mr.  Sidgwick,  whose  approbation 
is  at  the  opposite  pole  from  Landor's,  should  have 
fallen  into  a  similar  error.  He  says  : 

In  meeting  [Ulysses],  as  in  meeting  Pier  della  Vigna 
and  Brunetto  Latini,  the  preacher  and  the  prophet 
are  lost  in  the  poet. 

Here,  again,  is  a  false  simplification.  These  passages 
have  no  digressive  beauty.  The  case  of  Brunetto  is 
parallel  to  that  of  Francesca.  The  emotion  of  the 
passage  resides  in  Brunette's  excellence  in  damnation 
— so  admirable  a  soul,  and  so  perverse. 

e  parve  de  costoro 

Quegli  che  vince  e  non  colui  che  perde. 
150 


Dante 

And  I  think  that  if  Mr.  Sidgwick  had  pondered  the 
strange  words  of  Ulysses, 

com'  altrui  piacque, 

he  would  not  have  said  that  the  preacher  and  prophet 
are  lost  in  the  poet.  "  Preacher  "  and  "  prophet "  are 
odious  terms ;  but  what  Mr.  Sidgwick  designates  by 
them  is  something  which  is  certainly  not  "  lost  in  the 
poet,"  but  is  part  of  the  poet. 

A  variety  of  passages  might  illustrate  the  assertion 
that  no  emotion  is  contemplated  by  Dante  purely  in 
and  for  itself.  The  emotion  of  the  person,  or  the 
emotion  with  which  our  attitude  appropriately  invests 
the  person,  is  never  lost  or  diminished,  is  always  pre- 
served entire,  but  is  modified  by  the  position  assigned 
to  the  person  in  the  eternal  scheme,  is  coloured  by 
the  atmosphere  of  that  person's  residence  in  one  of  the 
three  worlds.  About  none  of  Dante's  characters  is 
there  that  ambiguity  which  affects  Milton's  Lucifer. 
The  damned  preserve  any  degree  of  beauty  or 
grandeur  that  ever  rightly  pertained  to  them,  and 
this  intensifies  and  also  justifies  their  damnation. 
As  Jason 

Guarda  quel  grande  che  viene  ! 
£  per  dolor  non  par  lagrima  spanda, 
Quanto  aspetto  reale  ancor  ritiene ! 

The  crime  of  Bertrand  becomes  more  lurid;  the 
vindictive  Adamo  acquires  greater  ferocity,  and  the 
errors  of  Arnaut  are  corrected — 

Poi  s'ascose  nel  foco  che  gli  affina. 

If  the  artistic  emotion  presented  by  any  episode  of 
the   Comedy  is  dependent  upon  the  whole,  we  may 


The  Sacred  Wood 

proceed  to  inquire  what  the  whole  scheme  is.  The 
usefulness  of  allegory  and  astronomy  is  obvious.  A 
mechanical  framework,  in  a  poem  of  so  vast  an  ambit, 
was  a  necessity.  As  the  centre  of  gravity  of  emotions 
is  more  remote  from  a  single  human  action,  or  a 
system  of  purely  human  actions,  than  in  drama  or 
epic,  so  the  framework  has  to  be  more  artificial  and 
apparently  more  mechanical.  It  is  not  essential  that 
the  allegory  or  the  almost  unintelligible  astronomy 
should  be  understood — only  that  its  presence  should 
be  justified.  The  emotional  structure  within  this 
scaffold  is  what  must  be  understood — the  structure 
made  possible  by  the  scaffold.  This  structure  is  an 
ordered  scale  of  human  emotions.  Not,  necessarily, 
all  human  emotions ;  and  in  any  case  all  the  emotions 
are  limited,  and  also  extended  in  significance  by  their 
place  in  the  scheme. 

But  Dante's  is  the  most  comprehensive,  and  the 
most  ordered  presentation  of  emotions  that  has  ever 
been  made.  Dante's  method  of  dealing  with  any 
emotion  may  be  contrasted,  not  so  appositely  with 
that  of  other  "  epic "  poets  as  with  that  of  Shake- 
speare. Shakespeare  takes  a  character  apparently 
controlled  by  a  simple  emotion,  and  analyses  the 
character  and  the  emotion  itself.  The  emotion  is 
split  up  into  constituents — and  perhaps  destroyed  in 
the  process.  The  mind  of  Shakespeare  was  one  of 
the  most  critical  that  has  ever  existed.  Dante,  on  the 
other  hand,  does  not  analyse  the  emotion  so  much 
as  he  exhibits  its  relation  to  other  emotions.  You 
cannot,  that  is,  understand  the  Inferno  without  the 
Purgatorio  and  the  Paradise.  "  Dante,"  says  Lander's 
Petrarch,  "is  the  great  master  of  the  disgusting." 
152 


Dante 

That  is  true,  though  Sophocles  at  least  once  ap- 
proaches him.  But  a  disgust  like  Dante's  is  no 
hypertrophy  of  a  single  reaction  :  it  is  completed  and 
explained  only  by  the  last  canto  of  the  Paradiso. 

La  forma  universal  di  questo  nodo 
credo  ch'io  vidi,  perche  piu  di  largo 
dicendo  questo,  mi  sento  ch'io  godo. 

The  contemplation  of  the  horrid  or  sordid  or  dis- 
gusting, by  an  artist,  is  the  necessary  and  negative 
aspect  of  the  impulse  toward  the  pursuit  of  beauty. 
But  not  all  succeed  as  did  Dante  in  expressing  the 
complete  scale  from  negative  to  positive.  The 
negative  is  the  more  importunate. 

The  structure  of  emotions,  for  which  the  allegory  is 
the  necessary  scaffold,  is  complete  from  the  most 
sensuous  to  the  most  intellectual  and  the  most  spiritual. 
Dante  gives  a  concrete  presentation  of  the  most 
elusive : 

Pareva  a  me  che  nube  ne  coprisse 
lucida,  spessa,  solida  e  polita, 
quasi  adamante  che  lo  sol  ferisse. 

Per  entro  se  1'eterna  margarita 
ne  recepette,  com'  acqua  recepe 
raggio  di  luce,  permanendo  unita. 

or 

Nel  suo  aspetto  tal  dentro  mi  fei, 
qual  si  fe'  Glauco  nel  gustar  dell'  erba, 
che  il  fe'  consorto  in  mar  degli  altri  dei.1 

Again,  in  the  Purgatorio^  for  instance  in  Canto  XVI 
and  Canto  XVIII,  occur  passages  of  pure  exposition 

1  See  E.  Pound,   The  Spirit  of  Romance,  p.  145. 
153 


The  Sacred  Wood 

of  philosophy,  the  philosophy  of  Aristotle  strained 
through  the  schools. 

Lo  natural  e  sempre  senza  errore, 

ma  1'  altro  puote  errar  per  malo  obbietto, 
o  per  poco  o  per  troppo  di  vigore  .  .  . 

We  are  not  here  studying  the  philosophy,  we  see 
it,  as  part  of  the  ordered  world.  The  aim  of  the 
poet  is  to  state  a  vision,  and  no  vision  of  life  can  be 
complete  which  does  not  include  the  articulate  formu- 
lation of  life  which  human  minds  make. 

Onde  convenne  legge  per  fren  porre  .  .  . 

It  is  one  of  the  greatest  merits  of  Dante's  poem 
that  the  vision  is  so  nearly  complete ;  it  is  evidence 
of  this  greatness  that  the  significance  of  any  single 
passage,  of  any  of  the  passages  that  are  selected  as 
"poetry,"  is  incomplete  unless  we  ourselves  ap- 
prehend the  whole. 

And  Dante  helps  us  to  provide  a  criticism  of  M. 
Vale*ry's  "  modern  poet "  who  attempts  "  to  produce 
in  us  a  state"  A  state,  in  itself,  is  nothing  whatever. 

M.  Vale*ry's  account  is  quite  in  harmony  with 
pragmatic  doctrine,  and  with  the  tendencies  of  such 
a  work  as  William  James's  Varieties  of  Religious 
Experience.  The  mystical  experience  is  supposed 
to  be  valuable  because  it  is  a  pleasant  state  of  unique 
intensity-.  But  the  true  mystic  is  not  satisfied  merely 
by  feeling,  he  must  pretend  at  least  that  he  sees,  and 
the  absorption  into  the  divine  is  only  the  necessary, 
if  paradoxical,  limit  of  this  contemplation.  The  poet 
does  not  aim  to  excite — that  is  not  even  a  test  of  his 
success — but  to  set  something  down ;  the  state  of  the 
154 


Dante 

reader  is  merely  that  reader's  particular  mode  of 
perceiving  what  the  poet  has  caught  in  words. 
Dante,  more  than  any  other  poet,  has  succeeded  in 
dealing  with  his  philosophy,  not  as  a  theory  (in  the 
modern  and  not  the  Greek  sense  of  that  word)  or  as 
his  own  comment  or  reflection,  but  in  terms  of  some- 
thing perceived.  When  most  of  our  modern  poets 
confine  themselves  to  what  they  had  perceived,  they 
produce  for  us,  usually,  only  odds  and  ends  of  still 
life  and  stage  properties ;  but  that  does  not  imply  so 
much  that  the  method  of  Dante  is  obsolete,  as  that 
our  vision  is  perhaps  comparatively  restricted. 

NOTE. — My  friend  the  Abb£  Laban  has  reproached 
me  for  attributing  to  Landor,  in  this  essay,  senti- 
ments which  are  merely  the  expression  of  his  dramatic 
figure  Petrarch,  and  which  imply  rather  Landor's 
reproof  of  the  limitations  of  the  historical  Petrarch's 
view  of  Dante,  than  the  view  of  Landor  himself. 
The  reader  should  therefore  observe  this  correction 
of  my  use  of  Landor's  honoured  name. 


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